


Graves All Gaping Wide

by imdisappointingmyparents



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Essentially the Wendigo Are Replaced By Ghosts, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gore, Involuntary Suicide, Mild Sexual Content, Mind Manipulation, Multi, Possession, Possession AU, Psychological Horror, Strap in Kids This is Gonna Get Weird, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Vengeful Spirits, Very Angry Very Lonely Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:17:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 43,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5996548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imdisappointingmyparents/pseuds/imdisappointingmyparents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The spirits of the mountain could hardly contain their joy.<br/>Ten new puppets had come their way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This work has not been beta read.

There were no graves upon the mountain. Just spirits and bones.

The spirits were hungry that night. Restless. But they were surprised to find that they could sense beating hearts. Ten young hearts in ten young bodies. So many unspent years to drink. Limber, youthful bodies to break, souls to imprison and warp and make like them.

The spirits were delighted. Their laughter hung on the harsh winter air, infected every snowflake.

Soon those sweet, fresh hearts would cease to beat.

\------------

"Don't you guys think this is a little bit cruel?"

Jessica hesitated. Despite her dedication to her best friend ( _you don't just make moves on a taken man. Come on, Hannah, you're better than that_ ) there was this ugly, churning feeling in her gut. The prank would almost certainly scare her off, to be sure, but if they went overboard—

_She deserves it._

The thought was strange. It felt foreign, like someone else had put it there. But Jess found she trusted the thought, deeply and intimately and perhaps a bit uncomfortably. It must have been her gut.  _Yeah, sure. Gut. Let's go with that,_ she thought.

"Oh, come on. She deserves it."

Sam continued to protest, but the others ignored her. They moved into the main hall, talking amongst themselves and making their final preparations.

Jessica smothered the rest of her doubts, comforted by the strange certainty she suddenly felt in her bones.

This was going to be good.

\------------

"Hannah!"

Sam walked the halls of the lodge, her stomach twisting into a carnival balloon animal. Jesus, first the fight with Beth, now this. She could only pray it wouldn't get any worse.

"Hannah?"

_She's in her room._

An odd sensation accompanied the thought. But the idea was a logical one. Hannah had probably seen the note and gone up to her room to freshen up. It only made sense. If Sam hurried, she could get to her before the prank could get underway and she could stop this whole absurd catastrophe from happening.

She hurried the rest of the way to Hannah's room and threw open the door. Inside was all the usual furniture; the soft, fluffy bed, the bookshelf, the exorbitant amount of butterfly knick-knacks, the bits of paper that she knew to be romance compatibility tests and other byproducts of an idle, hopeless teenage crush strewn all over the place. Hannah's room, just as it always was. But no Hannah.

Sam heard voices coming from somewhere else in the lodge. Then laughter.

No. No. Shit. No.

Sam ducked out of Hannah's room and broke into a run.

\------------

"You guys are  _jerks_!" Beth snarled at the others before bracing herself and running out into the blizzard. The falling snow hit her face with the force of a light slap. The cold burned her exposed skin but she kept going. She half-hoped Sam would follow her, but knew in light of everything that had happened between them, that wasn't likely. Sam wouldn't want to be stuck alone with her right now, especially if they got lost.

 _Whatever,_ she thought.  _Not my problem right now. God, those assholes. Those fucking assholes._

"Hannah! Where the hell are you?!"

 The snow was heavy. It clung to her boots as if the ground were trying to pull her into the frigid banks and drown her. The forest looked completely different in the dark and the storm. Shadows painted themselves across the trees and warped them into strange creatures that leered at her and reached for her back. The woods twisted and turned upon themselves and the familiar paths were buried in snow. Beth steadied her breathing and tried to collect herself.

"Hannah?"

A strange sound echoed somewhere in the snowy woods. It sounded almost like a chant. Beth stopped for a moment and cocked her head. She and Hannah weren't alone out here. A peculiar sensation ran through her, like a shiver but deeper somehow. More invasive. Shuddering, Beth trudged along until she came upon a trail of footprints. Thank God. Hannah must've been nearby. She followed the prints, careful to not misstep in the dark. For good measure, she switched on the light in her phone, then blinked in bewilderment as  _something_ crawled just out of the light's path.

What the hell?

Beth stared at the spot where she'd seen movement. When she approached, there were no prints in the snow, no sign of anything, animal or human, having been there. Beth breathed out. It must have been a trick of the light. She couldn't keep letting herself get distracted out here, not when Hannah was lost and alone and possibly freezing to death.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted an eerie light floating in the trees. It reminded her of the stories she'd read while studying Irish myths for a school report.  _Will o' the wisps are ghostly lights that lead weary travelers astray._ She didn't know the source of the light, but figured one of the floodlights was on the fritz.

The sound of somebody sobbing caught her attention. She rushed toward the source of the sound, and found herself in a small clearing, in the center of which sat a shivering, miserable Hannah, in only a thin shirt and jeans.

"Hannah!"

She ran to her sister and quickly assessed her sorry state. She shrugged off her parka and draped it around her twin sister's shoulders.

"I'm such an idiot," Hannah moaned, "I'm so dumb..."

"Come on," Beth said, bringing Hannah to a shaky standing position, "Let's get back to—"

Before she could finish, a bright blue light shone directly in her face. Beth screwed her eyes shut and winced away.

"Argh! What the hell?!"

She backed off a bit and squinted at the light out of the corner of her eye. It was the same as the one she had seen before, only much, much brighter. She turned to see her sister staring directly into the strange ball of light, a curiously blank look upon her face. Her arms, which she'd been using to hug herself moments ago, now hung dead at her sides.

"Hannah...?"

Without warning, Hannah began to walk towards the light, briskly but calmly. It was almost casual, like she was a high school student moving between classes. The light drifted backwards like a balloon and led her deeper into the woods.

"Hannah! Hannah, what are you doing? Damn it, get back here!" Beth bellowed. Hannah didn't hear her, or else, simply didn't listen. Beth sprinted after her sister. In the distance, she could hear that strange chanting again. It sounded as though it were coming closer to them. Beth didn't know what weird-ass  _Twilight Zone_ bullshit was going on, but she could only hope that she could somehow get through to Hannah and get the hell out of dodge before things got any worse.

 As she sucked through the branches they cut at her face and tore at her sweater. She had to stop twice to untangle the knitted knots of angora from the twisting, thorny foliage. She'd lost sight of Hannah. A sob pushed its way up her chest and into her throat, but she swallowed it down.

"Hannah!" Her voice broke. She breathed in deeply. In and out. Calm down. Good.

Twigs snapped and branches were bused aside. Something was crashing through the trees, right behind her. Beth didn't bother looking back, just bowled, paying no mind to the scratches and cuts the nettles and sticks left on her face and arms. Her breath exploded from her lungs. Heavy footsteps, heavy breathing. It was right behind her. 

Her pursuer shouted something in a language she didn't understand. It didn't sound at all friendly.

A fire burned through her legs. Her sides were splitting. A final surge of adrenaline overcame her and she barreled through the storm, over the footbridge. Her phone slid from her sweaty hand and down into the gap between the planks in the floor. Beth barely even noticed. Powerful footfalls on wood. He was right behind her. Shit. Shit. Shit. Her heart was coming close to exploding in her chest.

Beth looked up to see a massive cliff looming before her. She skidded to an unsteady halt. Hanging just off the cliff was that strange light, suspended in the sky. It looked gaseous, like a miniature sun. It still emanated that peculiar blue glow. And bathed in that glow was Hannah, who was walking right up to the edge of the cliff—

"HANNAH! NO!"

Hannah wasn't even fazed. She just kept walking, even paced as ever. Beth tapped into the last reserves of her energy and sped up, slamming into her sister and knocking them both to the ground. Hannah sat up without comment. Her face was still devoid of expression. Beth grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her with more violence than she'd intended.

"Hannah. Hannah? It's—it's me. It's Beth. C'mon, Hannah, you've gotta snap out of it."

Hannah's lips twitched slightly. Beth shook her again, more gently this time.

Out of the corner of her eye, Beth saw the strange man approaching. He was chanting again, loudly and deeply. The sounds seem to ripple in the air, distort the scant, cloud-filtered moonlight. Hannah lurched up, grabbing Beth's wrist as she went. The light flickered. The man's chanting got louder, faster. More frantic. Hannah dragged Beth along with her as she walked toward the edge of the cliff again. Beth struggled in her sister's inexplicably ironclad grip. Hannah wasn't normally this strong. But try as she might Beth couldn't even make a dent in Hannah's efforts. They moved closer to the edge. Beth dragged her feet in the snow and felt the tips of her boots scrape against the icy second layer as snow leaked through her leggings. She was cold and sore and weak and powerless. She let out one last scream before Hannah dove head-first off the ledge, dragging her sister with her.

With the last of her strength, Beth grabbed hold of a branch poking out of the sheer rock. Hannah still held onto her wrist, completely limp. Her arm burned, her very cells screaming with agony. She looked up in time to see the hovering blue light flicker and die. The afterimage burned blue-green spots into her vision. The man stopped chanting and came up to the ledge, bending down and offering a hand. Beth let out a shaky breath and looked down at her sister, who looked up at her blearily, like she was just coming out of a dream. Then her eyes widened and the serene mask of her features was shattered.

"Beth?! Beth, what's happening?! Oh my God!"

Beth swallowed. She couldn't. But she had to.

Her beloved big sister was counting on her. She couldn't just abandon her.

But she couldn't reach him like this, not with both hands full. And the only other option was letting go.

She couldn't, she couldn't, she couldn't—

But, oh God, she didn't want to die.

"I'm so sorry."

Hannah's scream as she fell rang through her every bone, burned itself into her brain. The man's hand still reached out for hers, like he hadn't seen what she'd just done, like she wasn't some kind of monstrous coward unworthy of survival.

Beth reached out with her free hand, but just as she did so, the branch snapped and she plummeted into the abyss below.

She barely had time to scream before her back connected with a rock and her spine snapped in two.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> This idea was inspired by the wonderful tumblr blog whatsinthemines.  
> It was also inspired by my tendency to overcommit and forget that homework is a thing. Oh well.  
> The new chapter of "The Widows" should be out soon.  
> Also, while this fic will most likely be an "everybody lives" affair, I might kill some people. Not because I dislike any of the characters, mind you; far from it! It just depends on what works best for the narrative. Hopefully it won't come to that and everybody makes it out alive (more or less) but I won't make any promises.  
> Feedback is always appreciated! Have a good day!


	2. Remembrance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Complacency.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !This fic and its dialogue's deviation from the actual scripted dialogue of the game is brought to you by laziness.

She'd dozed off for most of the bus ride from Calgary to Blackwood. By the time she came to, the sun was drifting below the mountainous horizon and the sky was pink and lilac. In the distance, she could see a storm brewing over the mountains. She hoped they'd all get in before it hit. Liquid static flowed through her earbuds. Sam toyed with her phone radio until she finally came upon a signal. It was, by the sound of it, a local public radio station.

"...one year anniversary of the horrible tragedy on Blackwood Mountain...Hannah and Beth Washington are still missing...one main suspect...long history with the Washington family..."

Sam half-listened, staring out the window, watching strange shadows dance in the snowy woods. They looked foreboding but familiar in a way that made her queasy. Over the past year she'd grown used to odd, dark shapes dancing in the corners of her vision. She'd never know their source, never spoke of them to anyone. Like a shameful sickness or a sinful thought, she'd hidden her visions from view, buried her experiences in the back of her mind. It was some bizarre manifestation of her grief, surely. But bringing it up would mean therapy and unwanted conversations and facing the grief she'd outrun by always moving, always exercising. You can't kill the devil, but you can still win as long as he can't catch you.

She switched off the radio and scrolled through her phone until she got to Josh's invitation video, watching it again for the tenth time since she'd gotten it. Josh looked sick. His skin was pale and greenish, and there were dark circles under his eyes. The last time she'd seen him was about a month ago. They'd talked and laughed and cried a little and then it had gotten silent; this suffocating, oppressive silence that felt like a muggy August afternoon. When they couldn't take it anymore they'd stolen away to Sam's basement where they got high and binge watched  _American Horror Story_ until they'd both fallen asleep.

Sam didn't like horror stories much. She was no Ashley; she could take a little spooking just fine. But the thought of strange, supernatural creatures creeping just out of view, waiting to prey on the unwary, made her uncomfortable in ways she didn't know how to express. It embarrassed her, that fear of impossible things. She felt like a superstitious grandmother.

The bus grumbled to a stop in front of the powder-dusted entrance to the Blackwood Estate. Sam stretched her neck and stood. She was the last passenger on the bus. The driver gave her a quizzical look in the rearview mirror. Hardly anyone came up here anymore. She ignored the stare and hopped off the bus, pulling her bag along with her and slinging it onto her back once she was ankle-deep in the snow. Night was falling fast. Sam hurried up to the gate.

"The gate's busted," Chris's note read, "Climb over!"

Sam stifled a laugh at the thought of  _Chris_ climbing over anything with any sort of success. Then she felt bad. A little. Not as much as she probably should've.

She climbed. Even in a skirt and carrying a heavy backpack, it wasn't difficult.

The animals were scarcer than she remembered. The entire walk up to the cable car station she saw only a single squirrel, and while it stuck around long enough to sniff her hand and run off with some of the granola bits she offered it, it looked skittish and small. But of course, it was winter. Predators must have been abounding.

At the cable car station she was greeted by an almost comically large bag, as well as a very familiar-looking phone. Before she could stop herself she snatched up the device and stole a look at the latest text:

 **Ash:**   **see you up there! :)**

A knowing smile crossed her lips. The sound of snow crunching user boots distracted her from her amateur sleuthing.

"So, I found something kind of amazing," Chris was saying as he approached. He stopped when he saw the phone in Sam's hands.

"Sorry, officer, you got a warrant?" he asked with a smirk. Sam thought she saw him blushing a little.

"I'm the mom friend, remember? That gives me universal snooping privileges."

"Riiiiight," Chris said as he walked up and ripped the phone out of her hand. "Jesus, I can't believe you!" Sam just shrugged.

"Sorry, sorry. Couldn't resist. So, what's this oh so amazing thing you found?" Sam asked.

The "amazing thing" turned out to be a shooting range that was still in working order. The shotguns were loaded and everything. Sam watched as Chris tested his video-game-sharpened aim, trying her best to maintain a neutral expression in spite of the fact that every gunshot sent ripples of anxiety through her. She was never one for violent pastimes. But to each his own, she supposed.

Chris was taking out a couple of tin cans when a small bird, white as the snow, landed on a steel drum set up in the range. It practically glowed in the half-night of early night. Sam blinked in surprise. Chris didn't seem to register its presence, just kept shooting at the other targets and doing a dumb little dance whenever he got a streak going. Sam would've thought the bangs of the gun would've scared the bird off, but it just sat on the barrel, tranquil as a frozen lake. Chris directed the barrel of his gun at a target directly behind the strange creature. Still the bird did not move.

"Chris, wait! There's a—" Sam started, but Chris's shot cut her off. The shot went right through the bird, which vanished in a tiny flash of light. "Chris, why'd you shoot at it?" Sam lambasted him, "It wasn't even doing anything." Chris turned and stared at her. He cocked his head.

"Shoot at what? The target?"

"No, the...the bird. Didn't you see it?" Sam asked. Chris looked genuinely confused.

"Sam, I'm not anyone to comment on somebody's vision, but—"

"I swear there was a bird there," Sam insisted.

"Okay," Chris said, "But if I shot it, where's, like, the body or blood or whatever?"

Chris was right. There was nothing. And though she was too far away to tell for sure, it didn't look like any snow had been displaced. It was as though there had never been anything there at all.

"I could've sworn..."

"It must be that Vegan Guilt," Chris teased, "You're having visions of all the poor creatures you ate back when you were an ignorant carnivore swine like the rest of us."

"Y'know what? At least I repented," Sam retorted, "I'm getting into Vegan Heaven."

"Hey, if they serve ribs in Hell, I'm set."

They kept up this dialogue as they walked into the cable car station and did a little exploring. Out of the corner of her eye Sam noticed a torn-up wanted poster taped to the wall. Upon closer inspection, she saw that the picture of the undesirable (one Victor Milgram) was entirely missing. Chris walked over to where she was standing and peered over her shoulder.

"Huh. Milgram," he said, "That's kinda funny."

"How so?" Sam asked.

"You ever heard of the Milgram Experiment?"

"Oh yeah! Wasn't that the thing where they told people they were shocking people and they saw how far the subjects would go if people were telling them to shock the people or whatever?"

"Pretty much. Seeing what kinda stuff people would do if somebody with, like, authority told them to do it."

"Creepy."

"Yeah."

"Speaking of—" Chris gestured toward a poster advertising the old sanitorium on the mountain.  _For a healthy body and mind,_ it read.

"Hannah and I, we were always daring each other to spend a night in that place."

"Really?" Chris asked.

"Yeah. Back when we were like thirteen. We always chickened out at the last minute though."

Chris's eyes darkened at the mention of Hannah. Sam swallowed and tried to distract her mind from the drifting fog of grief that had flooded her mind since the twins' disappearance.

"I heard they did an episode of  _Ghost Adventures_ up there," Chris said. Sam raised her eyebrows.

"Are you serious?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

They walked together to the cable car, Sam dallying a little before Chris told her politely to please get a move on before they both froze to death. Chris unlocked the door and clambered in. Sam followed him in and closed the sliding door behind her. It wasn't much warmer in the cable car, but at lease they weren't getting barraged by snowflakes and currents of frigid winter air. The seats were stiff and cold and made her legs and ass sore, but it could be worse. Chris recounted the story of how he met Josh (third grade, some poor girl hit puberty early, harassment, seat reassignment, Chris and Josh. Boom. Butterfly effect), even though Sam had heard it a thousand times. They all had. It was one of those personal legends exclusive to their friend group. Jess and Em had a similar story, albeit with a far less happy ending.

"Hey, Chris?" Sam asked after Chris had finished. They were about three quarters of the way up the mountain. The world below had vanished under a blanket of somber-looking clouds.

"Yeah, what's up?"

"Have you, uh, have you talked to Josh lately?"

Chris lowered his head.

"No, not really. I've been texting him some, but he's been pretty quiet. He won't return any of my calls."

"Oh."

They went quiet for a bit. Sam dragged her foot against the stained metal floor, listening to the soft groan her boot made as it went back and forth.

"I'm sure he's just...busy," Sam said, despite knowing better. Chris said nothing in return.

"Anyway," she said, "We'll get to see him again soon enough, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

Out of the corner of her eye, Sam thought she saw something again. Something slivery-white, dancing just into her view and out. But this time she kept her mouth shut.

\------------

Jessica's mind was in a thousand places, none of them anywhere close to the cable car that had just arrived at the top of the mountain with a lurch. It wasn't until she heard a familiar muffled yelling that she broke out of her trance and walked over to the cable car to give them a hand.

"Oh my God, I thought we were goners. Another ten minutes in there and I would've chewed off my own leg," Chris said as he stepped out of the car.

"Ew, Chris, that's so gross," Sam chimed in.

"Look, I've got a lot of meat on my bones. This is all muscle down here," Chris said, indicating his legs.

"Uh-huh," Sam hummed, rolling her eyes good-naturedly.

Jess relaxed a little. It was good to know that in light of the unending cataclysm of drama that had been her social life for the past few weeks, at least some of her friends were untouched by the storm.

Chris surveyed his surroundings as if sniffing the air for wifi signals. Finding none, he instead took interest in the note Jessica had in her hand. He moved in for the kill with surprising quickness.

"Gotcha!"

"Hey! Give that back, you tool!"

"Hey now, dear old Samantha here has already set a precedent for disrespecting personal property. I'm just...adapting."

"Chris, come on," Sam said, but he ignored her, examining the folded letter with a smirk.

"My goodness!" he gasped with an actor's seriousness, "Seems that someone has a little crush on our good friend and dear class president Michael Munroe! And what kind of sizzling erotica might our dear Jessica Pratt be capable of imagining? I wonder..."

Before he could break the seal on the envelope, Jess had wrested it from his grip again.

"Mike and Em split. We're together," Jess nearly snapped. Sam cocked her head.

"You and Em? I didn't know she was—"

Jessica laughed, more harshly than she'd intended. The times in high school she'd quietly eyed her friend's soft raven hair and dark clever eyes and thought  _if only_ felt like another lifetime ago.

"Over Em's dead body, I'm sure. I'm with Mike."

Sam looked embarrassed.

"Oh," she said.

"Yeah. It's whatever." Jess wished that talking about her former best friend didn't fill her stomach with poison. Jessica wished for a lot of things; she'd been raised on Disneyafter all.

"Woah, drama," Chris half-sang.

"Not really. Pretty clear cut, actually. Em's out. I'm in." And that was all they needed to know.

"Alright, alright, already," Chris said, "Let's just head up to the lodge. I'm getting tired of all this nature and junk."

"Chris, come on. Do you see this view? I mean, holy cow!"

Though Jess said nothing, she had to agree with Sam. The sun had set and the clouds had rolled in, and the last lingering light of the falling sun cast the sky in a deep, oceanic blue. Jess imagined seeing the shadows of whales swimming about in the cerulean aquarium of that sky. The snow flurries were just starting to pick up speed, flaking everyone's hair and clothes with fragile shards of white. Jess told Sam and Chris to go on ahead. She had to finish her meet and greet ritual. It was something she'd been doing for as long as she'd had friends. Whenever there'd been a gathering of any kind, she'd always hang out near the front and wait for everyone to arrive, playing the part of hostess even when she was just a guest. Jessica didn't know why she did it. Maybe it was just to remind people she was there at all.

\------------

"Hey, Em, you okay? You've been kinda quiet."

"Great. Fine. Wonderful. I want to kill everything with a hammer."

"Don't you usually?"

"Yeah, but like. Harder. I want to kill everything harder."

"Oh. Okay."

Matt held the gate open for her. Emily slid past without thanking him.

"Seriously," Emily groaned, "couldn't they have built the lodge, like, right next to where the cable car ends?"

"I don't think it would've been, like, as pretty, you know?" Matt replied. But Em had a point. Lovely though the mountain landscape was, it was also about a billion degrees below out and neither of them had remembered to bring gloves. Again.

"And where's the bellboy when you need one?" Emily asked, as if willing one to appear out of thin air. No dice. She grumbled something unintelligible and they walked under the relative cover of the footbridge. "Getting chills..." Emily mumbled.

"We're almost there, Em."

"No. I mean, like, getting kinda creeped out."

"Oh."

"It's gonna be weird seeing everyone again," Emily continued.  _Weird,_ as if the thought of seeing the boy whose sisters they'd inadvertently killed, not to mention Mike and Jess, undisputed champions of causing unneeded romantic drama in Matt's life, was mildly intriguing instead of dreadful and nerve-wracking.

"Definitely not gonna feel like a regular party," Matt replied. He and his girlfriend both had a talent for downplaying the catastrophic. It was one of the only areas in which they were evenly matched.

There was a song stuck in his head. He couldn't remember the name of it, but it was one of those catchy, sugary pop songs you heard on the radio all the time even if you moved mountains trying to avoid it. He realized suddenly and painfully that the song had been one of Hannah's favorites. He shook his head in a vain attempt to expunge the tune from his brain.

"I mean, what do you think—"

Before he could finish, a huge, loud _something_ dropped down in front of them and yowled. Emily yelped and jumped back a little. Matt edged toward her and readied his fists. Before he could slug their assailant, however, he heard the unmistakable triumphant laughter of Emily Tanaka-Clarke's least tolerable ex.

"MICHAEL!" Emily looked positively indignant. Mike just smiled at her like her moment of raw terror had been the funniest thing in the world. Matt fought the urge to knock that douchey smirk off his face.

"You really, really shoulda seen your faces right there," Mike chuckled. It was good to see that everything they'd been through in the past year had made him so collected and mature.

"Dude, I almost clocked you just now." The threat of violence was apparently also something Mike found hilarious. Matt had a hard time convincing himself that he and Mike had ever been genuine friends. Not that it was exactly peachy spending four years being the third wheel in the epic tale of the asshole king and his ten thousand girlfriends, some of whom hadn't even lasted a week. Still though, Matt had been relatively free of resentment until the latest of Mike's ten thousand girlfriends turned out to be his hawk-eyed, fiendishly pretty math tutor and jealousy had come a-knocking.

"Michael, you're a jerk." Emily said it like she was reciting an undisputed fact. There were fifty-two playing cards in a deck, the NFL had been established in 1920, and Michael Munroe was a fucking asshole.

Mike scoffed.

"Come on, guys, we're all friends here, right? No need for violence, just a little harmless fun! C'mon, we're out in the woods, it's spooky, let's get into the spirit of things..." His voice quirked up in a way that made something deep inside Matt's gut twist and coil angrily.

"The 'spirit of things'? Seriously? What's wrong with you?" Emily snapped. Mike gave her a look like she was a cantankerous house cat he'd just woken up.

"Pfft, I'm just trying to lighten the mood,  _Em._ Don't be like that."

"Like what?"

"The way you're being. You always get like this."

Matt felt suddenly as though he'd walked into a bad high school drama that got cancelled after half a season. He elected to step in before the waves of discomfort emanating from the three of them set something on fire somehow.

"Mike," he began, "I'm just gonna lay it out, otherwise this whole weekend's gonna suck ass for everyone." He couldn't help like Mike was evaluating him, scanning him for signs of weakness, as he went on. "This is super awkward, and we all know it. Let's just acknowledge it now and move on. Okay?"

Mike visibly relaxed.

"I hear you man. I get it. I don't wanna make this weird," he said.

"Cool," Matt replied, "So we're good?"

"All good." Mike's voice sounded like the kind of sickly sweet dessert you'd eat too much of in one sitting and then spend the next twenty-four hours feeling like shit and hating yourself for not exercising self-control.

Emily sneered.

"You guys gonna make out now?" she asked.

"Oh my God, totally, we're  _so_ gonna make out," Mike mocked her, his movements an effeminate parody of flirtation. "Yeah, no, I'm gonna go check on the cable car back down the trail. Cool?"

"Cool," Matt said. "See ya, man."

"See ya," Mike called as he ambled between them, back down the footbridge and out of sight. Emily watched him go, her expression unreadable.

"Aw crap. Hey, Matt? You think you could maybe take the bags up the rest of the way?"

"All of them?" Matt asked, bewildered.

"Yeah, just," Emily gestured toward their (mostly her) luggage, "All the bags."

"Wait, why?"

"I need to go find Sam. I totally forgot I needed to go talk to her before we get all the way up there."

"Em, c'mon, like, we're almost there—"

"It's important, Matt. Please." Emily looked at him like she already knew the answer. And she did.

"Yeah, sure, I guess. But you owe me one."

"Oh?" Emily quirked a brow.

"Yeah," Matt said, a little defensively, "You know, for all this?"

"I'll think about it." She was already walking away from him. "See you up there, sweetie." She blew him a kiss. Matt sighed to himself after he turned away.

Lord help him. Emily was just so beautiful when she was pleased.

\------------

The night was young and already bitter cold. Ashley was glad she'd remembered to bring gloves. She peered through the ice-dusted viewfinder and breathed out a wonderstruck sigh at the incredible landscape. It was like being transported to a transcendentalist painting. The beauty of the natural world was laid bare all around her, made surreal and dreamlike in the pale, cloud-filtered moonlight.

She moved the viewfinder this way and that, taking in everything with a thirst for knowledge that had dwelled within her soul for all her days. Learning was her passion, her solace, her rock when the rest of her life had been a monstrous ocean of trauma and uncertainty. Whenever her parents would fight downstairs she'd drown her fears in books. In the fearsome shadow of her father she'd survived by teaching herself about poetry, planets, plants and parables. The library closest to her neighborhood had become a second home when she'd moved to L.A. with her mother. And after everything with that stupid, awful, deadly prank had gone down she'd practically drowned herself in knowledge, burning through her reading list, obsessing over her telescope and and writing in her notebook until her demons were forced out of her mind through her pen and onto the page, bound by ink.

A curious silver gleam caught her eye. Ashley followed the light until it vanished from sight. Intrigued, she moved the apparatus around, searching for the light, until she came upon something not particularly intellectually engaging, but eye-catching nonetheless.

"Oh well," she said to herself, "Someone's getting a little friendly."

She couldn't tell what Emily and Mike were talking about, hidden away in the safety of the woods, but judging by their body language they both loved and hated what it was they were discussing.

"Need to check the expiration date on their big breakup..."

Before she could investigate further, however, a massive, wide-eyed face popped up and obscured her view. Ashley squeaked and lurched back from the viewfinder. Matt walked up to meet her, chuckling slightly.

"Geez Louise, Matt!"

"Sorry, Ash. I didn't mean to scare you. Well, I mean, I did a little, but not, like..."

"Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!" Ashley jabbed at his chest. Matt didn't seem to notice.

"Sorry, Ash, damn." For what it was worth, he sounded genuinely sorry.

"How's it goin'? See anything juicy in there?" He indicated the viewfinder. Ashley's stomach lurched.

_Oh. Well. Shit._

"Uh, n-not really. I mean, I think it's busted..." Ashley mumbled.

"Are you sure?" Matt asked. He moved past her toward the viewfinder. "Here, lemme check."

Ashley averted her gaze.

"Aw, son of a bitch!"

"It's probably nothing..." Ashley began.

"Oh, come on, is it ever just 'nothing' with Em?"

"I mean, I just...uh..."

But Matt was already storming off. Ashley bit her lip and prayed for deliverance.

It was going to be a long night.

\------------

Jessica's fingers were freezing. Why hadn't she thought to bring gloves? She stretched her neck and shifted slightly on the bench. She figured if she didn't change positions at least once every five minutes her ass would freeze to the bench, which would honestly be really funny if it happened to someone who was not her. Bored, she picked up her phone and began to scroll her messages (dull, shallow stuff from her old high school girl posse) when a clumpy snowball whizzed past her head and exploded on the wall behind her.

"Oh, you did  _not_ just do that." Jessica rose to her feet and prepared for war.

"Put your hands where I can see 'em!" A booming voice, familiar despite the cheesy accent, commanded her, "We've got you surrounded!"

Channeling four years worth of a private fascination with her high school's drama club, Jessica sauntered forward, rising her arms above her head.

"But who am I to retaliate?" Jess asked in her best Southern Belle, "What choice do I, a supple young rebel girl, have but to surrender to the strapping military guard that has come to take me into custody?" Mike and Jess moved slowly toward each other, as if they were dancers moving to meet on a ballroom floor. Jessica carefully shaped the snow she'd discreetly gathered into a perfect, aerodynamic sphere behind her back.

"Well, I dunno, when you put it like that—"

Mike didn't have time to finish before Jess dashed off at an angle, hitting him square in the chest with a snowball as she went. Mike took only a moment to digest his shock before he was back in step with her, hurling snowball after snowball. Jessica dodged them almost effortlessly. Her new boyfriend was a lot of things. A dead eye, however, he was not. She picked behind a table and hocked one at him, hitting him in the back of the head. Mike stumbled forward, recovered, and retaliated, missing her again. Jess giggled. Good to know she had the edge over him in something. Besides fashion sense, obviously. That weird plaid jacket-sweater thing he was wearing was only acceptable in that it made him a really easy target against the white of the snow.

Her boyfriend finally gave up on ranged assault and flat-out lunged at her.

"Gotcha! You're going down!" He cried, pinning her to the ground and smirking triumphantly over her as his arms held her in place. She thought about sucker punching him in his perfect face with a snowball, but decided against it at the last second.

"So," she asked, locking eyes with him, "Did I go down?"

"Uh, I don't think so."

"I think you'd know if I did," Jess replied, enjoying the flush of red that briefly overtook his face.

"Alright, alright," he said. Jessica grinned.

"My my," she teased, "So are we calling it my favor then?"

"You're a worthy opponent, Miss Jessica the Snowball Queen." Jessica laughed.

"Okay, that sounds vaguely dirty." Then again, most things Mike said to her sounded vaguely dirty, so she wasn't sure why she felt the need to say something about it now. Mike smiled warmly.

"My lady."

He leaned in and caught her in a kiss, starting shallow and deepening with exhilarating quickness. Something deep inside her stirred impatiently.

"Wow," she breathed, "Save some for later, buddy."

"Endless reserves," he told her. It sounded like a line he probably used often. Jessica tried not to think about that. "But," he said, "we should really get back up to the lodge."

"Yeah. It's so nice out here though. Pretty breathtaking." She looked him full in the face when she said it. Mike helped her up. As Jess reacquainted herself with the world beyond Mike's face she thought she saw a strange shadow move somewhere in the woods. Probably a bird or something. Mike clicked his tongue and looked at her.

"Shall we?"

They walked hand-in-hand, paying no mind to the cable car groaning to life again again behind them. Someone was waiting at the bottom.

\------------

It was lonely on the mountain.

Grown-ups always said that mean people were mean because they were lonely.

That wouldn't explain why their friends had gone through with the prank, at least not all the way, but maybe there was something of that truth in there.

Maybe they could be forgiven.

But they had to suffer first. It was only fair.

Bodies were made to hurt and be hurt. Hands to hit and teeth to bite and tongues to sear. The corporeal world was ugly and cruel.

Bodies were sinful and spiteful and awful. Bodies were shells, lined with thorns.

The bodies would have to be broken, the shells cracked, for progress to be made, forgiveness to be possible.

Forgiveness among the living was a lie.

It was lonely on the mountain.

Pretty soon they wouldn't be lonely anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like whenever I write something about this godforsaken game everybody ends up at least a little bit gay. That said, I don't think anybody minds.  
> Whew! That sure took a while to write. I hope you like it thus far!  
> Not sure what direction it's going to take from here, but hopefully I can up the ante on the scary factor from here on out.  
> Also, remember what I said about hopefully not killing anybody? Yeeeeaaaahhh...Don't get too attached to your faves is all I'm saying. There will still be survivors. Maybe. Hopefully. Probably not.  
> Feedback, as always, is appreciated.  
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Anxiety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Resentment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that an anxiety attack is described in some detail in this chapter.

Two boys climbed up the slopes of the mountain toward the lodge. The two youngest spirits of the mountain followed behind.

They smiled warmly down upon the sickly looking boy. Their beloved big brother.

The boy who had taught them to ride bikes and swim in a pool. Who'd fixed their toys and battled with them with cardboard paper towel rolls. Who'd taught Hannah how to talk to boys and Beth how to bullshit an essay the night before it was due.

They missed their parents and they missed their friends, but they missed their brother most of all.

He was suffering, weighed down by the faults in his body and the illness in his brain.

It was unfair. But they could make everything right again. They had that power.

Things would be as they were before.

Maybe even better.

\------------

"Man, I swear this mountain gets bigger every time we climb it," Chris groaned. The harsh north wind nipped at his skin. It was getting darker, can colder, and he felt his body getting heavier with each step.

"Oh yeah? Feels the same to me."

Josh, by contrast, was making annoyingly good time, trudging thought the snow like it wasn't even there. Cherished childhood friend or no, Chris couldn't deny that he wanted to punch him a little. He was used to getting shown up by Mike, Matt and Sam, but watching his famously unhealthy best friend practically prance up the mountain while he panted and wheezed behind him vexed him more than he cared to admit.

"Dude, you practically live here. You could probably walk this bitch in your sleep," Chris grumbled. Josh laughed.

"Yeah, I guess that's true," he said. Chris hadn't heard Josh laugh in months, but he even after finally hearing his laugh again he couldn't bring himself to feel that relieved. Josh's laugh sounded flat and forced, like he was reading a cue card.

"When are you gonna install some cell towers up here?" Chris asked. "I'm getting withdrawals already."

"You got a spare million lying around and I'll fix you right up," Josh told him.

"Can't you at least pitch in with some of your weed money?"

"Nah, man. I need that money. Gotta eat. I'm a growing boy."

"Riiiiight. Totally forgot about the financial plight of my billionaire buddy. How could I possibly deprive you of your livelihood like that? How selfish of me."

Josh had stopped texting him about a month ago. Chris's every attempt to get into contact with him had gone into the void. And yet, here they were, talking and joking like no time had passed.

They made the rest of their way up to the lodge to find a small group of their friends standing around the front steps. All present and accounted for, barring Mike, Jess, and Em.

"Hey guys," Josh called. "Get up here okay?"

Josh chatted it up with the other and Chris let his gaze wander to Ashley, who was off to the side, looking at something in the trees. Her pale green eyes were wide and her head was slightly cocked; whatever she was looking at was apparently quite engrossing. Her long red hair looked, as usual, unbrushed. Chris suspected she was hiding some serious bedhead under that beanie of hers.

She was a flighty, frizzy mess. She was beautiful.

The sound of cursing snapped Chris out of his reverie. Josh was grappling with the door handle, to little avail.

"Damn. Door's iced," he said. Chris looked at the front of the lodge. Somehow it felt even colder than the temperature reading on his phone. Sure, it was probably just windchill, but the cold felt different somehow. Deeper.

"Maybe there's a way in through one of the windows?" Chris suggested. Josh stopped trying the door.

"Worth a go, I guess," Josh said. As he moved over to inspect the windows Chris shuffled over to Ashley, who didn't seem to notice him at first but instead kept staring into the trees.

"Ash?"

Ashley looked up, startled.

"Uh, hey," Chris said. His throat suddenly felt as though someone had lined its sides with salt. He swallowed. "How're you doing?"

"A little cold, I guess," Ash replied. "I could probably use some time curled up by a fire, you know?"

"Sounds nice," Chris said. Ashley smiled. The two of them were momentarily distracted by the sound of Matt pacing back and forth through the snow in the background. Chris stole a glance at him. The group's resident gentle giant looked uncharacteristically pissed.

"What's up with him?" Chris asked. Ashley rubbed the back of her head.

"Uh, probably, just, y'know. Girl problems."

"Oh," Chris said, "I guess I wouldn't know much about that."

"Me neither," Ashley said, "Or boy problems for that matter. You know that joke that bi people get told 'no' twice as often? Thinking there must be some truth to it."

"Okay, Ash, come on," Chris said, "Who'd say no to you?" As soon as the words left his mouth he willed them to come back and stay there. No such luck. Ashley blushed. Chris felt his own face get hot.

"T-thanks, Chris," Ashley spluttered. "Anyway," she said quickly, "being single totally has its perks, right? I won't be able to do the Single Ladies dance alone in my bedroom if I'm hitched, will I?"

Chris was momentarily lost in that adorable mental image when Josh called to him.

"Yo, Cochise! Little help here?"

"Y-yeah," Chris stammered, "Yeah, I'm coming." He walked over to Josh, watching as Sam passed him and struck up a conversation with Ash. Matt said nothing to anyone but continued to fume. Matt and Emily, he'd heard through the grapevine, were now together. Back when Mike and Em were a thing the two had each possessed an incredible capacity for pissing each other off. Judging by Matt's private rage fest, Chris guessed that Emily had kept that ability honed.

"So, Ash is looking pretty hot tonight, eh?" Josh asked as they stood outside the window.

"Not really. She looks pretty chilly actually," Chris replied. Josh raised an eyebrow. "Imean, 'cause of the snow. It was a joke."

Josh snorted.

"C'mon, man, when are you gonna take her to the bone zone? You two can't just keep eye fucking for the rest of your lives."

"Okay," Chris said, "First off, 'the bone zone' sounds like low-budget skeleton porn. And second, Ashley's my friend. First and foremost. Even if she did by some miracle think this—" he gestured to his girth "—is attractive, don't you'd think it be weird if we, like, hooked up? Like, what if it's all weird and we can't be normal around each other anymore?"

"Chris, look," Josh said, "I'll admit that I don't really know a ton about relationships beyond, like, weekend flings, but I'm pretty damn sure that being with her won't be that different from when you hang out now. Just less eye fucking, and more, y'know, fucking."

"Eloquent as ever, bro."

"Alright, whatever," Josh said, rolling his eyes, "Pep talk over. Let's get our sexy asses out of the snow."

"What's the plan?"

Josh nodded toward a small metal container sitting by one of the lower windows. The dragged it under the window and Chris clambered up on top of it. Getting the window open proved to be surprisingly easy. Actually climbing through the window was less so. As he tumbled through the opening and landed hard on his back in the darkened lodge Chris took a moment to reflect on all the doctor's notes he'd forged in his time to get out of gym.

"You okay there, man?" Josh asked. He looked half-concerned, half amused. The urge to punch him briefly flared up again.

"Yeah...shoulda paid more attention in climbing class," Chris groaned.

"You mean, 'gym'?"

"Whatever."

"You okay to get the door?"

"No, I don't think so," Chris told him, "I think I'll just stay here on the ground while you all freeze to death in this jolly winter wonderland."

"Awesome. Knew I could count on you."

Josh retreated and Chris stood, illuminating the room with the light on his phone. He felt uneasy as he moved through the dark. There was this weird, almost electric tension in the air, like he was being run through with inexplicably harmless electric currents. His feet echoed against the floor.  _Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap._ The shadows shifted and changed in the light of Chris's phone like ink swirling in water, formulating strange, imaginary creatures and then dissipating. A glint of something shiny caught his eye and he stopped.

But the echo of his footsteps kept going.

_Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap._

He looked around for the source of the noise. Had someone followed him in here? Had some vagrant taken up residence in the lodge?

Chris felt his pulse pick up a little. The footsteps got a little faster, a little louder. He couldn't tell where they were coming from.

_Taptaptaptaptap..._

"Who's there?" Chris called, then regretted it. "Who's there" was what idiots in horror movies said right before they were butchered by some dude in a mask. The footsteps got louder still. Whoever was making them must have been running towards him. Chris spun around, trying to find where the sound was coming from.

_Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap—_

The sound filled his ears and rang through his body. Chris's muscled tightened instinctively. The footsteps got louder and louder until—

_TaptaptaptaptapTAPTAPTAP—_

They were right behind him. Chris shrieked and wheeled around.

Nothing.

The footsteps were gone.

Chris looked around a little more but found no sign of anyone else in the area. He decided to chalk it up to stress. He'd never been a fan of dark, enclosed spaces. Was anyone, honestly?

Chris walked to the door and wrenched it open. Immediately he was flooded by a swarm of freezing teenagers. Josh, Sam, Ash, Matt and Emily, who had apparently joined them in Chris's absence, all shoved past him in an effort to get to any sort of warmth.

"Took you long enough," Emily grumbled as she strode inside.

"Nice to see you too," Chris mumbled.

"Hey, man," Josh said, "You were in there for a while. What's up? Run into some bars?"

"I wish."

"Then what happened?" Ashley asked, "Are you okay? You're kinda pale."

"It's cool. I just saw a ghost."

Ashley blanched. Chris threw up his arms.

"Kidding, kidding!"

Josh closed the door behind him and they walked further into the lodge.

\------------

"Home sweet home!"

"I don't know if 'sweet' is the word I'd use," Matt said. He and Josh were getting the fire going while the others sat on the couches and made themselves comfortable. Emily sat with perhaps too much primness as she watched her boyfriend work. Every few seconds her eyes would flicker to the door, waiting for Mike and Jess to show up. Thinking about Mike caused a strange sort of static to fill her head. She shook her head to clear it and tried to think of something, anything, else.

She'd forgotten her favorite sweater at home because of course she had. The one she wore now looked good enough on her, but it also itched like hell. At least she'd been able to track down another version of the turtleneck in Matt's size. She didn't know how the man had been able to survive eighteen years on this godforsaken planet without her to dress him.

There'd been a time that Jess had tutted over her outfit and promised her the makeover of the century. Back in junior high Emily had been nothing more than a pasty, gangly geek in ill-fitting skirts. And now, six years later, Emily sat, virtually friendless but dressed to kill, in a lodge that felt more than ever like a mausoleum. And Jess was with Mike and had a practiced sneer reserved just for her.

Look how far she'd come.

Her throat felt dry. Matt was preoccupied with the fire, so she stood up to go to the kitchen and get the water herself.

And because the universe clearly hated her guts, she ran square into Jess and Mike coming into the foyer.

"Watch where you're going, bitch," she growled.

"Excuse me?" Jess replied, "Pretty sure _you_ ran into _me_."

"Oh, well, excuse me. Next time I see some backstabbing hoebag parading around with her latest catch, I'll be sure to keep my distance."

"Good. Please do," Jess sneered. She shouldered past Emily toward the couches. Mike followed suit, flashing Em a sympathetic look that she did not return.

Emily really wanted to get out of that damned room and just go into the kitchen already, but her rage kept her rooted to the spot. Jessica and Mike. Mike and Jessica. The words bounced around in her brain. Her boyfriend and her best friend, sneaking around behind her back until Mike finally decided to end the pretense and sent Em one last text a few weeks back, leaving her sobbing and screaming in her bedroom. Michael Munroe, her first everything, had stabbed her in the back with a dagger laced with honey-scented poison. Fucking Jessica. Who had pretended to be so sympathetic when Mike had left her. Two-faced bitch. She was just like every other "friend" she'd ever had. They talked to her all sweet so they could get what they wanted—money, power, prestige—and then left. She was an idiot for thinking Jessica would be any different. Her anger filled her up like a hot drink, seeping into the cracks in her soul and sending acid and motor oil coursing through her veins. Impulses that felt vaguely foreign told her to turn around, to not just fucking take it.

To burn Jessica Pratt to the ground.

"You know what's funny, Jessica?" Emily asked, her back still to the couches. Jessica didn't respond. Emily's hands balled up into fists. "The funny thing is—the fucking  _hilarious_ thing about this whole shitstorm is that you honestly, truly think he cares about you. Like he gives a shit about anyone but himself." Fingernails cut into her skin. "Like he isn't gonna just use you up until somebody prettier comes along, and he sees that you're just some stupid blonde bimbo and he dumps your ass, rinse, repeat." She heard Jessica stand up.

"Em—" Matt began.

"Shut up, Matt," she cut him off. Jess was walking up to her. Emily kept her back turned. "You really are as stupid as you look, aren't you?"

"You know, Em, I knew you had some problems, believe me, I knew." Jessica's voice was sweet as a caramel-coated razor apple. "But, Jesus Christ, I never knew just how deep it went."

Emily said nothing. Jessica's very voice was giving her a headache. She felt her pulse picking up.

"Look at me, cunt."

Emily turned around, slowly and precisely. Jess was glaring daggers at her.

"You just think you're so fucking special, don't you?" Jessica snarled. "You're so damn used to everyone waiting on you hand and foot that the instant you don't get your way the world is fucking ending. Well guess what, princess? Life isn't fair. Of course Michael didn't care about you. You're a bitch. You were a conquest he got saddled with. I actually know how to have fun and treat a guy like he isn't my goddamn slave, and, hey, maybe Mike likes that. So stop fucking projecting, and stop making this about you."

The static in her head was back full-force. Her heart was beating even faster than before.

"Right, of course," Emily replied, "I forgot how  _fun_ you were. And I'm sure Mike's gonna find it so  _fun_ when you're texting him every five fucking minutes asking him 'am I really good enough?' 'Am I really pretty?' 'Am I really worth it?' And you know what? Pretty soon he's gone see that you aren't. That you're just some insecure little puppy with tits and hair you can find anywhere. You're replaceable, sweetheart. Just accept it."

Jess raised a hand to slap her, but before she could, Josh yelled at them both to shut up.

"Stop it, both of you! We came here for my sisters, not for everybody's relationship drama."

Jess snorted and rolled her eyes. Emily did her best to get her breathing under control. Great. They'd been here for, what? An hour? And she already needed an Ativan. Fucking hell. Josh was telling Mike about some guest cabin where he and Jess could go and get it on and leave the rest of them to hopefully have a more pleasant evening. Emily counted ten seconds after they had left before making her way over to where Matt had stacked their luggage. She'd hidden her prescription bottle under a bundle of panties in one of her smaller bags.

And, of course, the universe still hated her, because that bag just so happened to be the one bag that was missing.

"Where's my bag?" She looked over at Matt, who was still standing by the fire.

"Huh?"

"My bag! The one with the pink pattern? The one I got on Rodeo." Matt looked like he was trying to remember what she was taking about with little success. Emily's headache intensified. "Oh my God, don't you remember? Next to the Italian shoe place where I got those stilettos and knocked over the rack while you were drooling all over the girl at the counter."

"Well, I mean, she was asking about my jacket—"

"Right, because she totally gave a shit about your 'designer' letter jacket." Matt looked affronted.

"Why do you hate my jacket?"

"Matt, you're not listening to me."

"Em—"

"The bag, Matt! I need that bag!" Though it was cold and dry in the lodge, she could feel herself beginning to break into a sweat. She was a mess. Jess would have a fucking field day with this.

"Oh my God, Em," Matt sighed, "Maybe you just forgot it."

"Do you seriously think I'd forget my bag?" Emily challenged him.

"I—"

"Do you?"

Matt sighed again.

"I guess not," he said. Emily looked out the window. The storm was starting to pick up.

"You must have left it down by the cable car station," she told him. Matt groaned. "Hon, we have to go get it."

"And then we can get warm?" Matt said, looking at her expectantly.

"Yes. Then we can get warm," Emily replied, somehow managing a coy smile despite the anxiety twisting and curling inside of her.

"Alright," Matt said, looking wistfully at the fire. "Let's go get it."

\------------

"Ugh. Exiled."

" _Sex_ iled," Jess corrected him. They were just about to leave when Josh threw open the door behind them.

"Hey, porn starts!" He called, "You're gonna need these." He threw Mike the keys and ducked back inside. Mike and Jess smirked at each other and hurried off through the snow.

"You know what? Emily's as dumb as she looks if she thinks she can cut in on what we've got going on," Jess said as they walked. She was smiling as she said it, but there was no mirth in her expression. "Maybe if we're lucky she'll follow us out here and get eaten by a bear."

"Yeah, I mean, I guess, but, like, she is going through kind of a rough time right now. She's just lashing out."

"Pfft, like she wasn't rehearsing that little speech of hers for weeks," Jessica snorted. "Whatever. I don't wanna talk about her."

"Of course, babe. Totally get it."

"What did you even see in her, anyway?"

"I thought you didn't want to talk about—"

"Just answer the question, Michael. Then I'll drop it, I promise."

Mike thought. The long, crazy saga of their relationship seemed like a badly written play in retrospect.

"I guess I thought she was...I dunno. Funny? In a bitchy sort of way, you know."

Jess nodded. She knew.

"And," Mike continued, "She was fun to, like, argue with, and stuff, if that makes any sense."

"I guess."

"Whatever. It's over now."

"Thank God," Jess said. They walked a little farther until they came upon a clearing smashed in cloud-filtered moonlight. She whipped out her phone. "Hey, hot lips! Photobooth?"

They posed, their expressions somewhere between Senior Prom and three AM Snapchat selfie.

"Hot," Jess said, smiling with pride. Then she frowned. "Hey, Mike? What d'you think this thing is?" She pointed at a weird-looking smudge in the background of the photo. Mike looked at it. He couldn't tell for the life of him what it was.

"Uh...? I dunno. Probably just some weird light trick or something," he said.

"Brr. This mountain is so damn creepy sometimes, I swear," Jess said.

"Yeah." Mike looked back at the spot where the smudge in the picture had been. Nothing.

Their walk was uneventful for a time, the two of them joking and jostling one another and doing a damn fine job at pretending nothing was wrong. Then they saw something black and yellow wrapped around a tree trunk. Mike leaned in to inspect it.

"Police tape..."

"From Hannah and Beth?"

"Looks like it."

"What's it doing out here? You'd think they'd clean it up..."

"Well, they never really closed the investigation, so..."

He stood up and shook his head.

"Let's get out of here, babe. I'm freezing my balls off out here."

Jessica pulled a face.

"And coming in at the top of the list of scary visuals I never needed ever..."

"Right," Mike laughed, "Sorry."

As they kept walking, Mike couldn't help but notice an odd feeling in the air. He couldn't for the life of him describe it, but it made his skin buzz and his breath get a little shorter. Jess looked agitated as well, but of course she had every reason in the world. Their frustration only grew when they came upon an obstruction in their path.

"Any ideas, Mr. President?"

"Hmm...I dunno, Jess. Thinking we might have to turn around."

"The only way I'm going back to the cabin now is if we get to set Emily's hair on fire when we get there," Jess replied.

"Oh, well," he chuckled, "I don't know about that—"

Mike didn't get to finish his thought before Jess tumbled off a ledge.

"Jessica!" he cried. He ran over to the ledge to find her already back on her feet, rubbing her head. "Are you okay?"

"I'm all good. Still have all seven of my limbs!"

Mike chuckled. Jess was grinning up at him. Her smile finally looked genuine.

"What happened, babe? Did you miss a step or...?"

Jess furrowed her brow.

"Honestly?" she said, "I kinda blanked out for a second. Next thing I knew, I was down here. Weird, huh?"

"Some night..." Mike mumbled. "Can you get out?"

"I dunno. It's pretty dark down here."

"Alright," Mike said, "I'm coming' after ya, stay put!" He jumped down into the pit, grunting as his feet connected with the dusty ground. He could hardly see, but it looked to be something like a mine shaft, carts and all. He looked at one that was closest to the ledge.

"Maybe we can move that cart?" he suggested. Jess giggled.

"Not sure how much help I'll be, but sure thing."

They moved the cart with some effort and walked down the newly opened path.

"Ugh," Jess shivered, "This place is giving me the willies. And not the good kind of willies."

Mike smiled at her.

"Can I give a little comfort and reassurance?"

"Save it for the cabin, buster."

Mike stole a glance at a map of the mine on a nearby table.

"Don't think this place is up to code."

"Jeez. You don't think we're in a dangerous part, do you?" Jessica asked.

"Let's not stick around to find out," Mike answered.

Finally, after what felt like hours, they'd found their way back out of the tunnels. The snow felt oddly refreshing after spending time in the stuffy mine shafts. A wooden signpost with "cabin" written with dripping white paint awaited them.

"Good to see the Washington's famous creativity being put to work there," Mike remarked, gesturing at the sign.

"Y'know," Jess aid, "When Josh said 'cabin' I was thinking, like, Abraham Lincoln."

"Wait 'till you see the Lincoln Bedroom."

"Oh? Are you gonna get all presidential on me?"

"Wanna take a ride on Air Force One?"

Jess chuckled. Then she was bounding off again, setting her sights on a nearby telescope.

"Gonna look at the trees, gonna look at the clouds, gonna look at the cabin—Woah."

"What is it, babe?"

"I thought I saw somebody at the cabin," Jess told him. Mike moved over to the telescope to check, but saw nothing.

"You sure? We've kinda been seeing things all night."

"Yeah..." Jess said, looking uncomfortable. "You don't think there's something kinda weird about it? Like a gas leak or something."

"I don't think so," Mike said. "I mean, Josh said he was checking this place up pretty recently, so..."

"Yeah, I guess," Jess said, not sounding at all convinced. "Let's get outta here."

It wasn't long before they came upon another roadblock.

"Damn," Mike said. "I feel like making a joke here, but 'cockblock' is just too easy and nothing else is coming to me."

"Hey, don't sweat it," Jess reassured him. "Sometimes you just gotta go for the low blow. If you know what I mean." She winked at him, then looked back at the fallen tree blocking the path. "I think I can get past it," she said.

"You sure, babe?"

"Yeah," she said, "I got it." She clambered up the tree and disappeared behind it. A few moments of silence passed. Mike rubbed his hands together in a vain attempt to ward off the bitter cold.

"Jess? You okay?"

No answer.

"Jess? Hon? Light of my life?"

Still nothing.

"Jessi—"

Jessica screamed.

\------------

"So what do you guys wanna do now that it's just us nerds?" Chris asked.

"Didn't I tell you guys I still have that Ouija board?" Josh proposed. Sam scoffed.

"A Ouija board, guys? Really?"

"What? I thought the atmosphere was appropriate. Gloomy and dark and eerie and all that." Sam sighed. If this was Josh's way of coping it was his way of coping. But.

"You know what? You guys have fun with that. I'm gonna draw a hot bath. Stave off the chills." Chris and Ashley nodded at her, but Josh perked up.

"Oh, um," he said, "Actually, I don't think I remembered to get the hot water going."

Sam raised an eyebrow. Josh threw up his hands.

"A lot's been on my mind, okay? I think I'm allowed a couple fuck-ups."

"Fair enough," Sam conceded. "Any way we can get the boiler going? I'd hate to delay your little fright-fest, but I can tell you with confidence that there's nothing in this world scarier than my B.O."

The four of them laughed and Josh nodded to her.

"Sure thing, Sammy. Let's just pop down there so you don't kill us all."

They walked together down to the basement.

"Geez, Sammy," Josh said, "Couldn't just find a deodorant that doesn't kill the whales?"

"Nope," Sam told him. "They're all mass whale murderers. Says so on the label. 'Now with 25% more murdered whales'."

"Those bastards."

"Captain Planet would be displeased."

The basement was rife with stale air and drifting dust. Despite that, Sam felt a mild chill somewhere in her chest. They heard footsteps on the floorboards on their heads.

"Do Chris and Ash even know where the Ouija board is?"

"Eh, they'll figure it out. It'll be a bonding experience."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! They like figuring things out together, right?"

"I bet ya fifty they spend the whole weekend beating around the bush."

"Over my dead body."

Sam smirked.

"Is it a bet or no?"

"You're so on."

The pipes creaked and wailed. A whistling went through them like the cry of a ghost. Sam shuddered.

"Hey, Sam?" Josh said after a moment.

"Yeah, what's up?"

"I just, I wanna say, thanks for coming up here. And, you know for getting it. I know they meant a lot to you too, and, and it's just hard, but...like, you get it, I guess. I dunno. Not sure if that made any sense. I'm in kind of a weird place tonight."

Sam smiled.

"I getcha," she said. Josh returned her smile. "Speaking of 'feeling weird', have you felt kinda...I dunno how to put this, it's weird..."

Josh frowned.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Like, I dunno, it's like...somebody's putting words in my mouth? Choosing what I'm gonna say?"

"I mean, I guess, but I always figured it was kinda the—" he gestured toward his temples. "You know."

"Yeah," Sam said, feeling a little embarrassed. She dropped it and they made the rest of the way to the boiler. Getting it working was more of a task than either of them had been expecting but finally, after what felt like hours, it finally clanked to life.

"Now that's more like it!" Josh whooped. "Five, girl!"

They high-fived. They had less than a second to celebrate before they heard an ominous thumping sound from somewhere in the basement. Sam bristled.

"What was that?"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a strange, shadowy figure rounding the corner. Sam and Josh took it in for a second, then bolster. The figure made chase. They easily outpaced it, making a break for the stairs only to find to their dismay that the door was bolted. Sam balked.

"What the hell?! Why is the door locked?"

"T-to keep out strangers," Josh stammered with a nervous laugh. The figure caught up to them, arms raised. Sam pressed her back against the door and swallowed a scream.  _Shit-shit-shit!_

The door jerked open behind them, sending Sam and Josh tumbling backward onto the floor. The figure stopped pursuing them, bent double and guffawed. Sam looked up from her spread-rage position on the floor to meet Ashley's widened eyes.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you guys," she stammered.

The figure caught its breath and raised its hood. Sam sat up and glared daggers in Chris's direction.

"Boom!" Chris crowed, "You just got monked."

"Seriously, Chris?"

"Sorry, sorry," Chris said, with a wave of his hands, "Ash and I found the board and I was...wait for it...bored. So I poked around Josh's Hollywood crap a bit and found this revealing little number."

Ashley shook her head in disbelief.

"What in God's name are you wearing?" she asked. Chris approached her and bowed.

"I've found my true calling," he said.

"Please tell me you're going to take a vow of silence," Ashley replied.

"Alright," Josh said as he and Sam got to their feet, "Good joke. Now, let's go experience the supernatural, eh?"

"You guys go ahead," Sam told them, "I see a hot bath in my crystal ball."

They nodded to her.

"If we accidentally summon a mega monster cannibal demon, we'll give you a holler," Chris told her.

"Please do."

She made her way upstairs toward the baths, hoping the warm water would soak into her and assuage the chill in her soul.

\------------

"Hello? Earth to Matt? You gonna come help me find my bag?"

Matt snapped out of his trance and turned to his girlfriend, who was already making her way down the path.

"Yeah," he said, "Yeah, I'm coming."

They walked in silence. Emily's eyes were shadowed. She wrung her hands and avoided his eyes. Matt wanted more than anything to reach out to her, but figured doing so would lead to nothing more than a bloody stump where his extended hand had been.

The song was back, playing even louder and more obnoxiously than before. It filled his mind with a strange fog and made it maddeningly difficult to concentrate, so much so that he nearly ran into the gate that stood in their path. He pulled it open and stood aside, bowing slightly.

"Here you are, madam."

Emily didn't break stride.

"Why, thank you, sir," she said, a playful smirk crossing her lips. She was in somewhat higher spirits, at least. The fresh air must've been doing her some good.

They made their way to a clearing. Emily halted and wrapped her arms around herself, closing her eyes. Matt wondered if she was close to another attack. She'd broken down in front of him for the first time while they'd been packing for the trip, Emily gripping the life out of some ridiculously expensive garment and fighting back tears while Matt had nervously tried to calm her down. When he remembered those brief flickers of vulnerability it was damn near impossible to stay mad at her, in spite of everything. He waited until she opened her eyes again and took a deep breath, then approached.

"Hey, Em?"

"Yeah?" she said, her voice still a little sharp. Matt chose his words carefully.

"I think...we should start this weekend over. Clean slate."

"Oh?"

"Nor arguing, no Mike, no Jess. Just you and me, enjoying ourselves in all this nature."

Emily's eyes lit up.

"Oh," she said, "You mean, 'au naturel'?"

"Damn straight."

"I can get with that," Emily teased as she flitted past him, her hips swaying playfully as she walked. They walked single-file, rubbing their hands together in an attempt to wring some warmth back into their bodies. The song in Matt's head was getting louder. He felt vaguely nauseous.

"...Matt? Hey, doofus! Come this way!" Matt realized he'd been swallowed up in a fog again. He looked over to where his girlfriend stood expectantly.

"You, uh, trying to get me somewhere private?"

"Why don't you, uh, come find out?"

He took the bait. Walking down the path, away from the gate, where Emily stood, looking slightly stiff. He was about to ask what was wrong when she spoke up.

"Hey...Thanks for helping me get my bag. I know I can be a little high maintenance." She kept her eyes fixed on a spot behind his shoulder. Matt racked his brains, trying to remember the last time Emily had admitted a flaw in his presence. He couldn't think of a single instance.

"It's no prob, babe. You just gotta remember there's more to this guy than just bein' a lean, mean, luggage lifting machine."

Emily smirked.

"You gonna back that up?"

"Allll day," he replied, a smile he hoped didn't look too ridiculous playing on his face. Emily burst into laughter.

"W-what?" she spluttered between giggles.

"Alllllll day, aha!"

"Wait, what does that mean?" Emily asked as they began to walk again.

"Like all day...long. I was bein', like, sexy."

Not long after they were greeted my a much larger clearing. The snow was drifting all around them, the glow from the floodlights catching in the storm. His girlfriend had an appreciation for beauty that Matt felt he possessed on some level, but couldn't hope to express or even understand within himself. It filled him with admiration and envy in equal levels, but, then again, that was the way Em made everyone feel.

"Oh, it's so pretty out here tonight!" Emily breathed, doing a little pirouette in the snow. Matt stifled a laugh. For a commandeering megabitch, she could be pretty damn cute when she wanted to be. "And so nice to be here with you, Muscle Man," she purred, skipping up to him and taking him lightly in her arms.

"Aw, I'm not all muscle," Matt scoffed, "There are some brains in here, too."

"Well, you've got enough brains to like be, so let's see that brawn," Emily said, letting Matt bring her closer into his embrace.

"You ever done it outside before?" Matt asked, taking a swan dive into her chestnut eyes.

"Outside of what?" Emily asked, sliding teasingly out of his arms and watching him from across the clearing.

"My car."

"I like your car," she said, "Roomy."

"This ain't roomy enough for you?" Matt asked, indicating the snowbound clearing. Emily said nothing, so he took the initiative, striding over to a nearby picnic table and brushing off the snow.

"Ah, you know what?" Emily said, cutting in, "Maybe there's a better spot."

"Does this 'spot' start with a G?"

"There are lots of places out here," Em protested.

"I already started clearing this off for us. Like a gentleman."

"Well, c'mon, let's look around."

For once, he ignored her and continued to brush away the snow until he was greeted with the wooden planks underneath.

And the heart and initials carved into them.

Never mind that Mike and Emily were the last fucking people one would ever think of when it came to that sappy romantic bullshit. Matt's hands shook. The song in his head was getting louder, more insistent. His head was starting to throb.

"Hey—" Emily began.

"What the hell, Em?"

"Don't be jealous," she implored. Matt threw up his hands.

"Why would you take me out here?" he asked, "You make me feel like a chump."

"Don't be so sensitive," Emily scolded him, moving over to embrace him again. "I'm here with you, right now. Mike's the chump."

The look in her eyes was pleading. Matt sighed.

"Alright," he conceded, "Maybe 'chump' isn't the right word."

"What is?"

Matt smiled.

"Lucky."

"Hm. You're gettin' there," Emily said, and leaned in to kiss him. They walked, side by side, down the path. Emily seemed to be in higher spirits now. Matt thanked whatever god or gods resided in the heavens.

"What's so important in the bag, anyways?" he asked. Emily's eyes flickered away and back.

"It's just my undies," she said. Her eyes glinted. "The lacy ones."

Something within him stirred excitedly.

"Well, why didn't you say we were scooping up such precious cargo? Andale, andale!"

"Woah, nelly, didn't realize it was so important to you."

"Didn't real—uh, h-hello? Why do you think I'm even on this silly trip?"

Emily laughed.

"Well," she said, "Now I know the secret to getting you to do what I want, when I want. Duly noted."

"No secret," he told her, "True fact."

They came upon a totem pole, tall and imposing in the cold Canadian night. Emily walked up to it curiously.

"Look at the sexy kisser on this thing. Dare ya to put your hand in it."

Matt looked at the pole and frowned. It looked like the kind of thing spiders would colonize.

"Hey, I wouldn't—"

"Just sliiiide it up in there," Emily cooed, putting her hand in the totem's open mouth. She opened her mouth to speak again but whatever she planned to say was substituted with a scream as  _something_ dragged her arm further into the opening, until her shoulder was pressed agains the wood. Matt panicked and left into action, wrestling her from the totem's grip.

As he dragged her to safety he blinked in surprise as she...laughed?

"Gotcha, big dip," she teased, holding out her completely unharmed arms.

"Jesus, you're ridiculous," he scolded her. Emily rolled her eyes and jostled him a bit.

"Oh, come  _on_ —"

But before she could finish her thought, she went suddenly silent, the gleeful grin leaving her face like ice melting on a stovetop. Her keen brown eyes glazed over, and she dropped her hands. Matt felt a strange chill run through to his bones.

"Emily? Em?"

Emily didn't appear to hear him. She just kept standing there like a zombie, her eyes glassy, her face completely blank. Matt waved a hand in front of her face.

"Em...?" Matt asked, unable to keep the tremor out of his voice. "Hey, Em? You're scaring me."

No answer. Matt swallowed. He gripped her arms and shook her gently. Emily shook him off but remained expressionless. She shoved past him, walking briskly down the path.

"Em, wait! What's going on?! Are you okay?!"

Emily slid down a ledge and strode into the woods, Matt in hot pursuit.

"Em, please! Are you alright? Talk to me!"

A light above him suddenly snapped on, and he was distracted momentarily by a sharp smell. The source was a bloodied, half-rotten pig's head on a stick, oozing frozen blood and pus onto the snow. Matt gagged. He glanced at a note tacked to the pole.

 _Welcome back,_ it read.

Matt looked up to search for Emily, to find that she was nowhere in sight. Liquid panic filled his veins. He dropped the note and ran blind into the woods. The song in his head was becoming distorted, the lyrics blurring together. The warped tune filled his mind and rapped at the backs of his eyes. The snow felt heavy under his boots. The trees twisted and elongated and seemed to have hands. When he stopped to catch his breath, he found that he was stranded, alone, in the woods, with no idea where he was.

"Emily!" he cried. "EMILY!"

Nothing. Nothing but the wind howling through the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oomph! This is definitely not my best work. It's something though. After the next chapter, I'm hoping to deviate from canon a little more.  
> Since Matt's lack of game-time was honestly a crime, I've elected to give him and Em some time on their own to try and flesh out their characters independently of one another. We'll see how it works out.  
> As always, feedback is appreciated. Leave a comment! I love 'em.  
> Thanks for reading!


	4. Omen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Misdirection.

It was quiet in the lodge, almost disturbingly so. Ashley thought she could hear the dust drifting in the air. She had gotten so used to the loud voices and larger-than-life personalities of Mike, Em and Jess that she could never quite appreciate the scale of it anymore until they were absent.

"So, it says that to communicate with the spirit world you have to free your mind of all preconceptions, drop all your inhibitions, and give yourself over to the will of those around you," Chris said, reading from the instruction manual. At "drop all your inhibitions", Josh's face lit up and he started to rummage through his pockets. Ashley looked at him quizzically.

"Since we're trying to get in tune with the ethereal, I've taken the liberty of procuring something to broaden our minds," he said with a smirk as he pulled out a small plastic bag with an unmistakable green-brown substance inside.

"Oh my God," Chris groaned. "I shoulda known."

"C'mon, man, are you gonna say no?"

"I'm not," Ashley said, a little quickly. The boys stared at her. "What?" she asked.

"Okay, okay, let's get in the spirit of things," Chris said, then, after a moment, "...Did...did you see what I did there?"

"Bravo, Chris. That's gotta be in your top ten," Josh told him as he set down the baggie and started preparing paper for joints. Ashley lit some candles, casting uncomfortable glances at the growing darkness. She'd never been a fan of the dark, drafty lodge, but in the scant candlelight the place was somehow even creepier than normal, which Ash didn't even know was possible. She was more than grateful for Josh's little contribution and lit her joint with Josh's bone-colored lighter as the final preparations were made. A few minutes passed and Ash could already feel her brain becoming pleasantly addled, the little anxiety demon perpetually perched on her shoulder shutting up for once. They sat around the board and took a few deep breaths. Ashley coughed. The air was filling with stagnant smoke, drifting about as lazily as Ashley's slowing thoughts. Her muscles relaxed for the first time all night.

"Okie-dokie, who wants to be the medium for this evening?" Josh asked.

"Not it," Chris and Ash said in unison. Josh sighed with the world-weariness of a jaded old man.

"If I must shoulder this tremendous burden," Josh said dramatically, bringing his hand up to his forehead in an imitation of a swooning maid. "Alright," he said after a moment, focusing on the board, "Anybody, uh, anybody out there?"

"Does anybody wonderrrrr, anybody caaaaare," Chris sang, the smoke exacerbating his already famously poor singing voice. Ashley giggled, her laugh a bit wheezy.

"Guys, come on, this is serious," Josh told them.

"Oh, I'm  _deadly_ serious," Chris replied, then, "...Get it...? 'Cause, like, we're talking to the dead?"

Ashley laughed again. Josh looked about ready to clobber them both.

"Alright, alright already," Ashley said after catching her breath, "Let's do this."

"Okay," Josh tried again. "Sorry about that, uh, spirits. Is anyone there?"

The three of them placed their fingers on the pointer in the center of the board. A minute passed without incident.

"Maybe it's a German ghost?" Chris suggested. He raised his free hand to the heavens and intoned, "Geister, nehmen Sie Ihre Kleidung."

"Wait-wait-wait-wait, what did you say?" Ashley asked. Josh was looking at Chris the way one might at a mischievous younger brother.

"Chris, stop, you're tainting Ashley's pure heart with sin."

At the word "pure", Ashley burst into laughter again (for reasons nobody except herself would ever need to know).

Suddenly, a sharp tug on their extended hands startled them all into silence. Ashley stared in disbelief at the Ouija board.

The pointer had moved on its own.

"Uh..." Josh began.

"Maybe we moved it by accident?" Chris suggested. "When we were joking around?"

They all sobered up a little (or at least as much as they could) and focused their attention on the board. Ashley could feel a headache coming on. Under their fingers the pointer felt alive, almost agitated. Ash fought the urge to rip her hand away. She stole a nervous glance at Chris, who looked just as unsettled.

"Uh, who...who are you?" Josh asked. Under their hands, the pointer began to move. Ashley searched in vain for signs of mortal tampering. As far as she could tell, nobody was doing anything to influence the pointer's movements.

"L...O..." Chris mumbled, watching the pointer move slowly over each letter. "Did you guys know any, I dunno, Lori's? Logan's? Lorelei's?"

"Not to my knowledge—" Ash began, but was cut off by the jerk of her own hand, pulled along by the pointer, which seemed to have an honest-to-God mind of its own.

N-E-L-Y

"Lonely?" Josh paled slightly. "Do we, er, do we know you?" he asked the air.

The pointer jerked almost immediately to the "yes" option on the board.

Ashley wanted to throw up.

"H-Hannah...?" Josh asked, his voice very, very small. "...Beth?"

"We should stop," Chris said quickly, giving his best friend a look of concern. "This isn't good—"

"No," Josh said firmly. "No. I want to talk to them."

An awful crawling sensation went up Ashley's spine and buzzed in her scalp.

The pointer picked up the pace, practically pulling Ash's arm out of its socket as it zipped around the board.

W-A-I-T-I-N-G

Josh got choked up. He took a long, shuddering breath before speaking again.

"I know, I know. I'll be there with you guys someday. Just...oh, God, I'm so sorry..."

"Josh..." Ashley began, before she could calm him the look of pain on Josh's face turned to determination.

"Do you guys need help?" he said, slowly and carefully. There was a pause, then the pointer moved again.

L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

"Wait, w-what? Library...? What's in the library?" Ashley stammered.

"I don't know," Josh said. His face was a portrait of anguish. Then it hardened. "This is honestly just...it's fucked. It's fucked up."

"Josh—"

"I'm getting some water." He stood up abruptly and nearly knocked over a candle as he stormed out of the room.

Silence. Chris adjusted his glasses. Ash rubbed the back of her head.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled.

"You didn't do anything wrong, Ash," Chris reassured her.

"Sorry," she said again.

Another pause. Ashley took her hand away from the now-inanimate pointer and took a long drag on her joint.

"That wasn't...there's no way that was really..."

"Somebody rigged the board," Chris said. "Or, you know, or something."

"...Yeah."

Ashley looked at the board like it was a dead dragon; powerful, unknowable, terrible, burying its secrets with it. The dragon's breath had been stolen by the three of them. Its fire burned in Josh's grieving, troubled mind, while Chris and Ashley choked on its smoke.

"So...what now?" Chris asked.

"Honestly? I'm kinda curious about what's in the library."

"Me too," Chris said. He grinned that trademark Chris-grin that he only brought out when he was concocting the stupidest plans ever devised. "Wanna do some Scooby-Doo-ing?"

\------------

 "Oof! Argh! Shit! Lizard tits!"

 Jessica stifled a giggle. Her boyfriend was apparently having much worse luck with the path than she'd had. Jessica crouched in the shadows behind a snowbank and rolled a clump of snow into a ball, preparing for the ambush of the century. Well, at least until that asshole Josh inevitably did something bigger and more surprising sometime later in the weekend and outshone her like he always did. Back when they were in high school she and Josh would get into little prank wars, spiking one another's brownies with spices and inserting questionably-written erotica into each other's English essays. Every now and again Jess would win out, but Joshua Freaking Washington had an aggravating knack for showing her up.

Their merry war of jokes and tricks had ended in a frigid truce. And though Jess wanted more than anything to take back last year and make everything okay, the finality of it, the weight of what she had done, crushed the cruel certainty even further into her heart. The terrible finality of death made her want to drink in life all the more, as if living as a parody of her old free-spirited self could somehow resurrect the dead.

There was a buzzing sound like bees drilling holes in her head. Jessica gritted hear teeth and felt a rush of dull pain shoot into her temples. She dusted the last stray powder off her snowball and coiled like a spring as the heavy footsteps of her beautiful blundering boyfriend got closer.

"Jess? Hey, Jess, c'mon, are you oka—"

Jessica sprang into action, letting out a battle cry and nailing Mike in the kisser with a snowball. Mike's scream of shock was cut off by the hard-packed snow connecting with his lips. Jessica burst into triumphant laughter. Mike's eyes were ablaze with betrayal and surprise.

"Ah—wha—gh, J-Jessica, what the hell?! You scared the shit out of me!" he spluttered.

"Goodness gracious, Michael, I had no idea you had such a delicate, feminine scream," Jess teased, "I feel like I know you so much better now."

"And I know you to be a wicked and mischievous devil."

"Couldn't have guessed that already?" Jess asked.

"Well, I had an inkling..."

"Hm...? What else about me do you have an 'inkling' about?"

"Oh, I think you'll figure it out."

Mike stopped laughing after a few moments. He looked at her with an expression Jessica couldn't quite place.

"Mike?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"

"Didn't you scream?"

Jessica blinked.

"Uh...no? Did you hear me screaming?"

"I mean, I thought—I guess it was just the wind."

"How dare you confuse me with something so insubstantial."

"I like to think of it as light and ethereal. Magical."

"Oh, boy, you wanna see magic tonight?" Jess asked, her lips curling upward in a delicate smile.

"I know I'm gonna see it," Mike replied, cool as a night wind.

The rest of the walk to the cabin was thankfully uneventful. The low-budget fright night gods had apparently run fresh out of ideas. At long last they came upon the cabin. Jess was having a hard time believing it was the sort of place you'd actually keep guests. Or anyone who wasn't being punished for some capital offense, for that matter. The storm had pounded it on all sides, and the shadows of the surrounding woods covered the shack in foreboding grey-black stripes. Jessica clicked her tongue in disapproval.

"Wow. I mean, like, I wasn't expecting a five star hotel, but this is a little..." she searched for the appropriately condemning phrase.

"Third-rate summer camp?" Mike volunteered.

"I was thinking more, 'obviously used to be a toolshed', but, yeah, that too," she replied.

"Well," Mike said, putting a hand lightly on her shoulder, "You know what they say. It's what's on the  _inside_ that counts."

"Guess you should...get inside, then," she told him.

The two of them were able to keep straight faces for about negative one second. Then they both burst into laughter.

\------------

"Oh my God," Ashley said, startling Chris nearly out of his skin, "I just remembered."

Chris turned to her. Her face was hard to see in the dim half-light of the library.

"Just remembered what?"

"So you know that one Agatha Christie book that was like...about...a body, and it was found in a library?"

 _"_ _The_ _Body in the Library?"_  

"Yeah! It's like...such a cliché. It's weird. And like, they went out of the lodge, so, like, why would there be clues in the library, y'know? Makes no sense." Ashley nodded, pleased with her own deduction.

"I dunno. I mean, this whole thing is probably a load of bull, right? I mean, ghosts? Come on," Chris said, mentally replaying the scene with the Ouija board and trying to pinpoint the moment they'd been tricked. It probably would've been easier had he not still been high as a kite. He was better off than Ashley, though, whose attention kept meandering to bizarre, dead-end avenues of thought.

The library was usually a cozy, welcoming place, but that night it looked positively haunted. The flickering light of Ashley's candle cast tiny islands of light and warped the room with strange shadows. Pillars of dust hung ominously in the scant light, like the souls of moths that had wandered into the hypnotic glow of electric lights and gotten themselves fried on the wires. The whole setup, with the eerie silence, faint candlelight, and ambient noises he couldn't quite place, made him wonder if he'd somehow been transported into a real-life level of  _Amnesia._ Chris wandered around the library with Ashley in tow, flipping through the occasional book and mourning their sober selves. He was already spooked enough without the added benefit of pot-induced paranoia.

They briefly parted ways, Chris wandering into a small alcove of books. A small, printed-out photograph caught his eye. The picture itself was nothing to write home about: just a shot of Josh and his sisters the summer before they disappeared. They were on a beach somewhere, the three of them smiling despite appearing wet and wind chilled, huddling together in the grey, rocky beach. Beth was beanie-less for once in her life, which almost made Chris chuckle. If there was anything Beth and Ash had in common, it was that the both of them looked naked without hats. Chris swallowed a sob as he took in the genuine smile on Josh's face, something he hadn't seen in what felt like years.

Then he made the mistake of turning the photograph over.

_I WILL TAKE THEM AND BLEED THEM LIKE PIGS AND RIP THEIR SOFT WHITE SKIN OFF! FUCKING 16 YEARS. 16 YEARS I WAITED FOR PRETTY LITTLE HANNAH AND BETH_

"...Chris? What're you looking at?"

Chris couldn't bring himself to face her. He stayed rooted to the spot, the horrible note clenched in his shaking hands. His knuckles here starting to turn white.

"Chris...?" Ashley's voice was tiny.

"Ash, we need to find Josh and get everybody and get off this damn mountain, " Chris told her, his voice coated with ice.

"No...no, Chris, don't hide things from me. What is it?"

"I think Hannah and Beth might've...might've been...killed."

"K-killed? By what?"

"We need to talk to the cops," Chris said, practically slamming the photo down on the shelf. He wheeled around and made a beeline for the exit, Ashley following suit. By some miracle she didn't go to inspect the photo. They figured Josh was probably either in the sitting room or the kitchen. When the sitting room turned up nothing, hey made their way toward the kitchen.

"But...why would somebody go after them?" Ashley asked, breaking the silence.

"I remember seeing this, uh, wanted poster earlier...some guy that was supposedly around here. And I think I remember Josh talking about some dude having some weird grief with his dad so..."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense."

"I mean," Chris said, "Maybe he was bluffing? Or they made it out?" He frantically searched for something better than the most likely option.

"Yeah..."

Before they could get all the way to the kitchen, the sound of Josh's scream confirmed Chris's worst fears. He broke into a run, throwing open the doors, Ashley close behind. The kitchen was deserted, with no sign of Josh or his attacker. Chris wandered nervously into the center of the room. Before he could make any further plans of action, however, he heard a thud and turned to find Ashley lying prone on the kitchen floor.

"Ash—!"

He turned and found himself face-to-face with a black-eyed horror show of a mask. A large, heavy hand landed on his shoulder, like the attacker was about to tell him a secret. The other hand wound back and struck Chris in the face. Chris tumbled backward into a black lake of unconsciousness.

\------------

She had forgotten the limitations of a living body.

She'd grown used to drifting, floating about as free as the mountain wind without the heaviness of flesh or the restrictions of muscle and bone. She felt stiff. Uncomfortable.

Her vehicle was all sharp edges and harsh, angry bones. Muscles honed for leaping and balancing. Long, manicured nails that curved like the claws of some fearsome animal. A tongue coated in acid and knives and  _don't pity me_. The girl had fashioned herself into a suit of armor, an angry, powerful war machine. The timid creature that lived within tried to push her out sometimes, but was put back in its place with surprising ease.

Emily, apparently, had no contingency plan for someone actually managing to get past her walls.

Her host's limbs moved heavily and sometimes clumsily. She moved at an awkward, robotic pace through the woods as she approached the cabin. Emily fought a little harder, her body twitching and jerking as their destination came closer.

 _Shh, easy,_ she whispered to her host,  _Not long now. Just be still._

She heard movement coming from inside the shack. There they were. There they were.

\------------

"Well!" Mike said, looking around the drafty old cabin, "This is, uh, it's erm..." He searched for something positive to say about the place.

"Desolate? Ugly? Fucking freezing?" Jessica suggested.

"...Rustic," he said at last.

"Well, that's one way to put it."

Mike walked over to the light switch and flicked it on. Nothing.

"Really rustic," he said.

"It's like those cheap-ass reality shows that are on at like three in the afternoon or whatever. Where they all have to camp in some awful, weird place and compete and stuff."

"You're right," Mike chuckled, "I hope that doesn't mean either of us are gettin' voted off."

"Can we expand it to the whole group?" Jess asked. "I might have a few suggestions of who we can kick out."

"So might Josh," Mike muttered before he could stop himself. Jessica lowered her head. "Aw, hun, I didn't mean it like that," Mike said quickly, walking over to her and wrapping his arms around her waist.

"I didn't mean it like that—"

"I know you didn't, babe. I know." He kissed her. "Now, what do you say we get this power thing figured out? So we don't y'know, freeze anything important off."

Jessica smacked his arm.

" _Michael!_ That's disgusting!"

Mike laughed. Jessica snorted and looked over to the fireplace.

"Well well," she said, gesturing toward it, "That might be the ticket right there."

"Aw, come on, we don't need a fire to heat things up," Mike purred, but Jessica slithered past him, taking a seat on the couch.

"Michael, I am a lady. And a lady would like to cuddle up with her man under a blanket next to a cozy fire, bathed in atmospheric mood lighting."

Mike gave her a little salute.

"Yes ma'am."

He got started on the fire while Jessica sat behind him, probably enjoying the view.

"I have to say, Michael, I'm not thrilled about our accommodations, but getting to see my man at work is making it all worth it."

"Oh yeah?" he said, "What's the review?"

"Ten on the muscles, six on the ass. Eight-point-five overall."

"Pfft, six? What is this slander?"

"I speak only the truth, my love. You should add more squats to your exercise routine."

Mike shook his head dismissively and returned his attention to starting the fire. Once that was taken care of, he rose to his feet and joined his girlfriend on the couch.

"Sooo...what now?"

Jessica's face faltered.

"Ah, well, I, uh, do you have, like..."

"What, babe? Protection? Sure." He gestured toward his pocket. "Don't worry about that."

"Oh," she said, "Okay. Well, um, what about...uh...other stuff...that we might..."

"I brought everything, Jess. It's cool. We're good."

Jess nodded. She looked around the cabin. Mike cocked his head.

"Everything okay, Jess?"

Jess nodded and flashed him a flirty smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Seriously," Mike said, "What's wrong?"

Jessica swallowed.

"Jess, babe, whatever it is, I promise I won't—"

"So, you know back in the cabin when Em was bitching me out and shit? How she talked about me being insecure or whatever?" The words came out fast. Jessica didn't look at him as she spoke.

"Yeah. But she was just being a bitch. You're fine, you're—"

"It's kinda true, though," she said, eyes fixed on the floor. "I need, like, validation. It gets annoying. People have told me."

Mike pulled her into a hug, running a hand through her soft blonde hair.

"Jess, hun, you're talking to the guy who had the misfortune of dating  _Emily Tanaka-Clarke._ Trust me, I'm used to girls who aren't super sure of themselves."

Jessica whimpered. Mike changed his tactic.

"I will never get tired of telling you you're beautiful. I'll never get tired of making you feel like you're enough. I'll never get tired of you, period. You're wonderful. You're cute and hot and funny and you shouldn't give a damn what jealous bitches try to say about you."

He moved his hand to the zipper of her jacket.

"Now...what do you say we help out our dear old friend the fire here and heat this place up?"

"I hope that's not what you say to all the girls," Jess giggled, "Cheeseball."

She undid his jacked and sloughed off his layers until he was in nothing more than worn out jeans and a wife-beater. Jessica teased off her own jacket, evidently enjoying the widening grin on her boyfriend's face. Mike felt a pleasant ache below his belt.

Before they could get any further, they were cut off by a sharp, slow knocking. They looked up, startled. Jessica huffed.

"Whatever," she said, blowing a few hairs out of her face. Then she caught him in a kiss, deepening it slowly and tantalizingly. Mike wrapped his arms around her, slowly rolling up her shirt until he pulled it over her arms and threw it across the room.

The knocking came again, faster and more insistent this time.

"Oh my fucking God," Jessica growled.

"Babe, c'mon, it's probably just Chris or Josh being a dick."

"Oh no," Jessica said, her normally warm green eyes hardening into cold, mossy rocks. "There's only one person who'd go through this much effort to fuck this night up."

She lifted herself off him, not even bothering to grab her shirt before storming out of the cabin. Mike heard the door swing open and the screeching winter wind blast through.

"Oh, I knew it," he heard Jessica almost yell. "You know what, Emily? If you're so desperate for Mike's dick, you can just—"

She stopped abruptly. Mike sat up, worried.

"Jessica?" he called.

He heard a thud from somewhere outside. Mike stood up and hurried toward the front of the cabin.

"Jess, are you alright? Guys, what's going on?"

Before he could get any further, Jessica practically barreled into him. Mike barely had time to look past her and notice Emily lying in a heap on the ground outside.

"Jess, wait, what happened to—"

She cut him off with a kiss, her eyes shadowed and strange but unmistakably filled with desire. Her hands clawed at his back, leaving deep scratch marks as she pinned him against a wall and continued to kiss him.

"Oh Mike," she hissed, her words slightly slurred, "Oh Mike."

"Ah—J-Jess, wait, what are you doing, what—"

She slammed a knee into his gut and ground it into him. Mike felt the weight of it like a bag full of rocks hitting him in the abdomen and he doubled over in pain. Jessica buried her hand into his hair and pulled, the pain searing like acid into his scalp. He screamed as Jessica threw him with impossible strength out into the snow. The frozen ground connected with his back and knocked the wind out of him. Mike lay there, spluttering and gasping, as his girlfriend loomed over him, moving toward him like a puppet on strings.

" _Miiiiichael..._ "

She grabbed him by the front of his wife-beater and began to lug him through the snow. The ice and rocks pulled at his clothes and tore through his exposed skin. Mike thrashed and beat at her wrist but couldn't make her release him, or even break stride.

"J...Je...Jess-i-ca...st-stop...please...what're you doing?"

" _Shhhhh..._ "

The winter wind screamed in his ears. His attempts to resist got more feeble. Jessica laughed in a way that the real Jess would never laugh.

Mike thought he could hear strange, disembodied voices whispering in his ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright alright alright.  
> Sorry about the short length and poor quality of this chapter. I've been pretty stressed with school, and I didn't even have time to check this chapter for grammar/spelling mistakes, so it's more than a little shoddy.  
> Even so, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and are enjoying this work so far!  
> Fun fact: Ashley was originally supposed to be a stoner who pretended she was in an Agatha Christie novel the whole night, but the creators decided to change her and make her more of a straightforward "shrinking violet" character. Unfortunately.  
> Feedback is always appreciated. If you have the time, please leave a comment, or twelve.  
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Emergence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Disbelief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna go ahead and move away from the prank a bit, since it's not really all that different from the prank in the actual game. Just a heads up.  
> Also, this chapter gets pretty graphic. So be warned.

_"Mike?"_

A lovely, taunting voice called to him through a wall of deep water. The dry, cold air tore into his wounds and sent a white hot fire coursing through his veins. Mike's lids were heavy as stone but with with enough effort we was able to pry them apart.

_"Mike, darling, please wake up."_

Mike stirred. Dirty yellow light swam in his blurred vision. He tried to move, to push himself up, but every impulse burned and twisted his muscles. He groaned.

"Ungh...J...e...ss...?"

Jessica giggled, her voice soft and girlish. It echoed through the cold, drafty space. Mike blinked once, twice. He was in some kind of cavern, full of rusted equipment. Was he back in the mines? With Jess?

"Jessica...what..."

"I've missed you, Mike," she purred, her words strangely morphed, like she didn't know the way around her own teeth. Her manicured nails ran over the side of his face like dull knives. Mike shivered. "It's been almost a year, you know."

"Wait," he moaned, "What...Jess...why..."

"Hush now, darling. Your doll isn't gonna answer you."

Mike tilted his head a little and heard the ground tremble and groan underneath him. Not Jessica's sickly sweet voice echoed through the caverns.

"It's nice, you know. Having a body again. It's warm. She'd make a good coat." She leaned down and put her hand on Mike's chest, pressing down on an open wound. Mike screamed. The cry reverberated horribly. He thought he could hear distant, distorted voices laugh in response.

"You made me so cold," she snarled, "I'm so damn  _cold. All the time._ You get fires and touch and clothing and sex and I'm so  _cold._ It's not fair."

"I don't understand..."

Not Jessica smirked in a twisted imitation of Jess's true, kind smile.

"Of course not, honey. That's okay. I still love you."

She stood and cracked her neck back and forth. Her eyes were hard as jade.

"We're going to make everything good and nice and fun again. But you won't get to be part of it until you've learned some things. Okay?"

She ran her tongue over her teeth as if savoring the taste of Jessica's body. She examined her nails in the half-light, then cast a glance down at her own, slightly frostbitten body.

"She's so pretty," Not Jessica marveled, "But so loud."

She put a hand on her chin and stroked it lovingly.

"We'll take care of her. Tame her. Fix her. She'll be so lovely."

Mike's ribcage turned to ice.

"Who are you?!" he screamed with all his remaining strength, "What do you want?!"

Not Jessica smiled down upon him with a mix of pity and disgust.

"You are all so lost in those nasty little bodies of yours. We're going to improve you." She leaned over him, standing on her bruised, purple toes. "Starting with this one."

Her delicate lips parted, the fingers of one hand slipping into the gap. She pushed down, opening her mouth slightly as her other hand wrapped around her head and hooked onto the top of her mouth. A wet, distorted laugh came from her, filling up the mine shaft as it slowly dawned on Mike what was about to happen.

"JESSICA! NO—!"

Too late.

There was a sound like leather being torn apart. A pulpy line of red spread across Jessica's face like Joker makeup. A big, mocking smile. Her laugh choked and devolved into a horrible, blubbery gargling that buried itself in Mike's brain and imprinted itself on his memory like a stamp. Her body twitched and spasmed as her hands pulled her once-beautiful face further and further apart. A little bit of her blood rained down on his face. Finally, he heard a sickening series of cracks like twigs snapping and Jessica's lower jaw was gone, her tongue lolling out, spilling blood and saliva onto the earth. For a tiny fraction of a tiny second, her green eyes returned to their normal gleam, realization, pain and despair flashing in them before her eyes glazed over entirely.

Her bloodied corpse fell forward, landing with a thud right next to Mike.

He heard a creak.

Before he could find the source of the noise, Mike and Jessica's combined weight caused the broken-down elevator on which he'd been sprawled to plummet down the shaft. He was too shocked to scream before everything went dark.

\------------

Matt wasn't sure when it was he'd broken into a run. A fire blazed in his muscles and tendons and the scenery whizzed by as he tore through the woods, searching for anything that would lead him to Emily.

Someone must have drugged her. That was the only explanation. Maybe Josh was trying to get back at her by fucking her up and knocking her out and humiliating her or something.

Embarrassment for embarrassment. Degradation for degradation.

Matt seethed at the thought of someone poisoning her. Of him allowing it to happen. The rage turned into more adrenaline to power him forward through the blizzard. He left across a stream, hopping effortlessly from barrel to barrel. It was like the football practice from hell. A short while later he was sliding carefully down a cliffside, wondering where exactly it was he was going.

Something was simply compelling him to go this way. He hoped it was a hunch.

He leapt across across a ledge and landed clumsily on the other side. A little farther along the way he lost his footing and tumbled gracelessly into a mine, landing hard on the ground. This was insane. He felt like a terribly misplaced video game character.

He fumbled his way through the dark, searching for any light source he could find. An eerie orange glow caught his attention at last. Following it led him to a dilapidated barn. The lights within flickered. Matt frowned. How was that possible? This mine had likely been abandoned for years, and yet the lights were fully operational. He wandered down a stairwell and came upon a disused elevator shaft, minus the elevator. Matt wandered cautiously toward the shaft, but stopped when his foot landed in something wet.

He looked down. The puddle was as red as old wine and congealing fast. And half-submerged in the puddle was a lump of pale flesh, unrecognizable at first until he noticed the teeth. And the lip.

A jaw.

A  _jaw._

A wave of bile crawled up his throat. Matt fought to choke it back down.

He bent over and grabbed his knees, desperately trying to catch his breath.

Then he noticed something flicker in his periphery.

A girl.

"Emily?" he called. No response.

He ran in the direction of the noise.

He combed the building to no avail. Then he heard a distorted female voice echo through the space.

In no time at all he was standing at the base of a series of bars and outcroppings, enough that he could potentially climb his way out. As the top stood another female figure, perhaps the same one. Matt ignored the seeming impossibility of someone climbing up what looked to be the world's least stable climbing wall with that sort of speed, but if it really was Emily up there, then he wouldn't put it past his girlfriend to break the laws of physics to get something she wanted.

Matt sighed and searched for a foothold.

Who knew his athletic abilities would be in such high demand today?

Once he'd finally reached the top he was greeted not by his girlfriend but by even harsher winds and the silhouette of a strange building somewhere in the distance. That same impulse told him to travel there.

Matt hurried along, knowing full well that he was probably walking right into his death.

_\------------_

Emily's head thundered. She brought herself slowly to a sitting position as full consciousness gradually returned. The blizzard wind cut into her skin. The snow that now caked her clothing was beginning to seep in through her layers, chilling her to the bone.

Where was she? What had happened? Why was she in front of some random, dilapidated cabin in the middle of the woods?

Beth.

Beth?

Where was Beth?

They'd been out there together, hadn't they? Out in the storm. She'd been crying. Beth had draped her coat over her and tried to take her back to the lodge, and then a light—

She pressed a hand into her temple. Everything was a blur. Shakily, she staggered to her feet and looked nervously around the words. Where was Beth? Why had she left her all alone?

Why had everyone left her?

"Beth!" she cried. "Beth! Where are you?"

No answer. No one was out here but her and whatever lurked in the trees.

Nervously, she began to make her way through the woods. She had to find Beth. It was her fault she was out here. She'd done...something, and now Beth was out here in a goddamn blizzard and Emily had to save her before they both died of fucking hypothermia. The snow crunched under her boots as she half-ran through the storm. Every bend and twist in the forest looked the same. Strange shadows danced in and out of her view.

"Beth! Beth, c'mon, don't be a bitch!"

She came upon a half-lit clearing and wheeled around. Hadn't she been here before? But there were no tracks. She couldn't have. And yet she remembered this clearing perfectly. She'd been crying here. Crying because of Mike. Because of the breakup? Why out here? When...What...?

"Beth!" she called again, a desperate tremor finding its way into her voice, "BETH!"

Silence. Emily slammed her fist into the trunk of a nearby tree.

She wasn't going to have any luck looking for her like this. The only thing she would accomplish at this point would be getting herself even more lost. She looked around the clearing and, after a moment, noticed a floodlight bleeding out into the air. Thank God. She could make her way back to the lodge and then go back out to find Beth.

Finally she came upon the main grounds of the lodge. Feeling equal parts relieved and uneasy, Emily made her way down the path.

Then she saw the brilliant splash of red mar the blue-white world.

Blood. Blood. Ashley. Blood.

Emily's heart crawled halfway up her throat and lodged itself there.

Chris and Ashley were staggering an an awkward tandem. Chris was holding Ash like he was afraid she'd turn to dust if he let go. Both were crying.

"...Blood...!" Emily breathed. "Is—is that blood, Ash? Please tell me that's not—"

"Josh is dead," Chris blurted. Ashley whimpered.

Emily's mind reeled. Josh was dead. Josh. Dead. Another Washington kid's blood on her hands.

Wait. Another...?

"Beth..." she mumbled stupidly.

They stared at her. Emily shook her head to clear it.

No. She wasn't making any sense. Beth was dead. She'd known this for a year.

"Okay," she said, trying to calm herself down, "Okay. What happened?"

"There was—t-there w-was a maniac...and...and he...he...took us and Josh and...and Chris had t-to choose...and—and—" she whimpered again and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Maniac? Are you serious?"

Chris looked her dead in the face.

"Yes," he said.

Emily inhaled sharply. Chris never joked when he looked at people like that. They had to do something, and fast. Get the others together, call for help, and get the hell out of Dodge before anyone else got butchered. She did a quick mental tally of the people remaining. Mike and Jess were off fucking somewhere. Sam was probably still in the lodge. And Matt was...?

"Where's Matt?"

Chris frowned.

"Wasn't he with you?" he asked, "You two were going to get your bag or something. Right?"

Emily thought. Through the uncharacteristically thick fog of her mind she could see the two of them trudging through the snow, flirting, bickering, laughing. She'd played a little joke on him. She'd been laughing, and then...cold...

"Okay," she said, desperately trying to keep herself under control. If she kept this up, she was going to have another attack before she could do anything useful. "Okay, so, we need to find Matt, and get help, and get out. We can do that. Easy. I'll just go get help and—"

"You just want to save yourself," Chris snapped. Emily glared at him.

"No, I'm just trying to do the logical thing so we don't all get killed."

They searched each other's eyes for a moment, each one waiting for the other to back down.

"Alright, fine," Chris sighed, "But you shouldn't go alone."

"Are you asking to come along?" Emily scoffed. "What about Ash? We can't just send her off by herself."

"I'll be okay," Ashley squeaked, "Chris can go. You guys get help, I'll try to find Sam and we'll get everyone together."

Chris looked at her nervously, but she gave him a nod and a hug.

"Come back safe, okay?" she said. Chris made a little affirmative noise and hugged her tighter. Emily huffed impatiently.

"Alright, lovebirds," she said, "Let's get moving. At this rate the cold's gonna kill us before anything else gets the chance."

\------------

Everything hurt.

And then nothing did.

The cold seeped into her, became her, was her.

She was dimly aware of her own dead eyes staring up at her from the floor of the mine shaft. Mike's battered, bloodied, unconscious form lay beside it. What a pretty picture this would make.

She drifted, wandered, thought. Thoughts were all she had now. And memories.

And grief.

She had no body left. No looks. Nothing anyone treasured. She was worthless now. Nothing. Just soundless cries on the winter wind.

And then there was a soft voice echoing through her very being.

_It's okay. It's alright. Come here._

The voice was painfully familiar. She would weep if she still had tears to shed.

But Hannah was not angry. Not vindictive. Not cold. Her voice was kind, and as Jessica drifted toward it she could feel something like an embrace, though she had no body to receive it.

_You're with us now. We'll take care of you._

She couldn't speak, but her thoughts bled out and pooled in the air for Hannah to understand.

_I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry._

The embrace grew tighter. She was still so cold, but, held tight by a long-lost friend, she felt just a tiny bit better.

_Do you want to be forgiven?_

She hadn't even thought forgiveness was possible.

 _Yes,_ she thought desperately,  _Yes, I want to._

Hannah pulled her closer.

_You will be. But you have to help us first._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am truly, genuinely sorry. Jess deserves so much better. She really does. But! She'll still play a very important, active role in this story.  
> Because, you know, ghosts.  
> This chapter was a rush job, which is why it's so short and probably littered with spelling errors. I'm very sorry. School's been hell.  
> Anyway, at least we're finally kicking off, eh?  
> Stay tuned for more spooky shit.  
> Also, I have a [tumblr](http://imdisappointingmyparents.tumblr.com) now, if you guys wanna go check that out!  
> As always, feedback (ESPECIALLY comments!) is wholeheartedly appreciated.  
> Thanks for reading!  
> P.S. Thing I actually had to google for this chapter: how might one potentially rip one's own jaw off? Good times. Don't image search it.


	6. Prey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Doubt.

The moon hung bright and imposing through a gap in the clouds, casting a ghostly light on the massive compound coming ever closer as Matt made his way over the rocky, snow-swept terrain. Matt's head swam with the syrupy pop song that was  _still_ stuck in his head. The tune in his head stuck the creepy old building and the even creepier things he'd already seen in a disturbing state of incongruence. He was walking through the grounds of an abandoned sanitorium and his brain couldn't even come up with an appropriate soundtrack.

He peered over the walls and caught sight of a strange looking man in a number of ancient looking coats. He was holding a lamp in one hand and an ancient-looking book of one kind in another. A couple of wolves hung around his heels. His gaze wandered over to the wall and Matt instinctively ducked, hiding his face fro the stranger until he was sure the man was gone.

As if the night couldn't get any stranger.

He looked up just in time to see the smaller of the two wolves ducking into an entrance to the building immediately ahead of him. Matt gulped. Every instinct he had was screaming of him not to follow, but a tiny part of his brain was saying that he might have something to do with the strange things he'd seen that night.

That he might have been the one who'd drugged Em.

Matt sucked in a breath and hoisted himself over the wall. The chill of the night had soaked into his legs and made the landing even more painful. Matt grunted. He moved as stealthily as he could toward the interest, trying to ignore the wailing wind that sounded more and more to him like howling. He considered the entrance. Going in that way was probably suicide. He absolutely no desire to wind up facing town the killing end of a wolf. He looked around for a bit, then caught sight of a surreptitiously-placed metallic sheet with a small opening visible just behind it. He crashed through the branches and debris that stood in the opening's way, praying that the figure and his attack dogs were too far away to hear. He slid back the sheet and squeezed through the hole, wishing for once in his life that he were a little smaller.

He was in a basement of some sort. Rusty, neglected pipes ran like veins across the ceiling, which was riddled with gaping, rot-rimmed holes. Matt took a deep breath and instantly regretted it. The place smelled like every bad smell ever to have existed. Matt looked around a bit, not finding any plausible way out except through one of the larger holes. He stacked a few of the more stable things lying around in the basement and made his ascent into what appeared to be the main hall.

His footsteps echoed through the dark, empty, cavernous place as he took a few cautious steps. If this place had ever been made to be welcoming, it certainly wasn't now. Snow and moonlight fell into the room, and Matt thought he could hear the very scaffolding groaning with the effort of keeping the structure from crumbling completely.

He heard a noise from somewhere else in the building and wheeled about. He wished he didn't watch so many bad slasher flicks.

Tracing the source of the sound, he found a locked door, a sign above it indicating that a security pass was required. Through a gap in the door he could see the strange man throwing bones to the wolves and looking about. He looked exhausted. After a while, he walked off somewhere out of Matt's sight, the wolves falling after him. Matt rather doubted that he'd be able to find a pass, but he supposed there wouldn't be any harm in trying.

He walked carefully through the ruined asylum, mindful of cave-ins and fallen beams. At the end of the only hall that wasn't completely inaccessible was a doorway marked "morgue".

Lovely.

He looked around, not finding anything particularly helpful (although he was finding plenty of wonderful things that would surely do the trick if he wanted to never sleep again). Articles about caved in mines, bloodstains on the floor, strange cries that were probably (hopefully) the wind whistling through the windows. Finally he came upon a machete lodged in one of the tables, spotted with rust but still usable. He wrenched it out after a couple of tugs and inspected it. It was something, at least. Could always feel better with a weapon.

He cast a glance over to the drawers lining the walls. He had a sinking feeling he was going to have to look there to find a pass.

Swallowing his fear, he strode over to one wall and hesitantly opened a random drawer. Nothing but a what appeared to be a death certificate for someone named Sarah Smith. Death from internal bleeding after attempting to dig out her own intestines. Matt felt nauseous again. He closed the drawer and braced himself for a second before moving on. The other drawers he opened told tales of similarly gruesome deaths, all of them suicides. Bizarrely, not all of them were patients. Some of the doctors and nurses had also partaken, throwing themselves from the roof, gouging their own eyes out, ripping out their throats, and other ways too gruesome and creative to mention. It was like those suicide epidemics that hit small towns and schools sometimes, Matt thought.

He pulled open yet another drawer and came face to face with the rotted, insect ridden face of someone who'd evidently spent their last day on earth having an even worse day than him. A rat scurried out of its gaping mouth. Matt drew back and nearly retched. Thankfully, a chapel pass was pinned to the front of what remained of its uniform. Matt thanked whatever fickle god resided in the heavens and snatched it before making a beeline for the exit.

The pass worked. Something was going his way tonight, at least.

As soon as he found his way out of this nightmare he'd find Emily and the others and get them all out of this freezing Canadian hellhole.

God, were they all even still alive?

He entered the chapel and climbed the stairs without paying the surrounding structure much mind. Everything was getting depressingly similar in its decrepitude.

He was torn out of his reverie by the sound of growling. A wolf waiting at the top of the stairs lunged at him, chasing him back down the steps he'd just ascended. Matt yelped, taking the steps two at a time, running through the nearest door and slamming it on his pursuer, who continued to snarl and scratch at the door. Matt glanced through the window and saw the strange man again, wandering into another room. Matt made his way to the ground floor and tried the next chapel door he found. Waiting on the other side was yet another wolf.

 _Are you fucking serious?_ Matt thought furiously.

This wolf was, thankfully, a touch more docile than the first. After a few moments of stillness and calming words, he was able to calm the thing enough to slide past it.

Matt was not a dog person. He sort of hated dogs, actually.

He hadn't always. When he was six he'd begged his parents for a puppy. But then a few years later he and his family went for a camping trip out in the mountains and, one morning while hiking, he and his brother Jacob had run across a stray dog. They'd had no idea how the dog had gotten all the way out here, but it was clear there was something wrong with it. Well, it was clear to Jacob, anyway. Ignorantly, Matt had bounded right up to the damn thing, hoping to make friends with the strange mutt. It rewarded him with a snarl and snapping jaws. Jacob had lunged in and pulled him away, but not before the dog, mangy and vicious, had sprung, biting Jacob on the shin.

They'd been miles from any sort of clinic. By the time they'd gotten home and gotten help Jacob had already looked horribly sick. An infection stole his life away a few days later. Matt stopped asking for puppies after that.

Matt searched through the room. Furniture had been placed in the chapel and made it into a sort of makeshift sitting room. In a small chest he found a pile of bones and warily offered the wolf one. It growled and snapped the bone out his hand, gnawing it and ignoring him. Matt sighed and gripped the handle of the machete tighter.

On a nearby table he found a lamp and a lighter. Thankful he'd no longer have to grope in the dark, he grabbed the lantern in one hand and slipped the lighter into his pocket. Near the back of the room was a door closed with a rusted lock. A few sure kicks snapped the ancient thing and the door creaked open.

Down the stairs he found a back room and, at the end of it, another locked door, but this one wouldn't budge. Frustrated, he turned around and looked for another way.

\------------

The two of them were silent as they made their way to the cable car station. Emily shivered and hugged herself a little. She couldn't process everything that had happened. She was with Matt and then she wasn't and Josh was fucking dead (her fault, her fault) and there was static in her head and she was pretty sure she was going crazy.

From the looks of things, Chris wasn't faring much better.

She didn't dare ask what had happened. Hoped beyond hope that it wasn't real.

There was alway the possibility that this was a dream. That the gaps in her memory and the horrible, bloody sights she'd seen were all the byproducts of an overstressed mind drunk with sleep and trying in vain to make sense of the senseless.

When they got to the cable car station, Emily distantly heard Chris whimper as the two of them took in the cable car station. A number of chunks were taken out of the door and a sharpened red axe was sticking out of its center. Emily shuddered. It felt like they'd all been transported into a shitty horror movie. She swallowed and hesitantly made her way to the door, Chris in tow. Chris took a hesitant step toward the door and wrestled the axe from it, holding it awkwardly in his hands. Emily rubbed the back of her head and thought.

"What now?"

Chris's brow wrinkled. He considered the door, then a nearby window.

"I mean, I guess I could, like, try to break down the door," he said, "but I feel like whoever's doing this shit would hear us."

"You think he's still around here?" Emily asked.

"I really don't wanna take my chances, Em."

He looked back to the window. Emily noticed at about the same time he did that it was slightly ajar. Chris looked back and met her eyes.

"I know what you're thinking, and no."

Chris shrugged.

"Look," he said, "I'd totally do it if that were an option, but I'm not really, like..." he gestured toward his girth, "...aerodynamic enough."

Emily huffed. But the more she looked at Chris and took in the awful, haunted look in his eyes the harder it got to argue with him.

"Pfft, fine. Whatever. But you fucking owe me, Christopher."

"I'll shower you with eternal praise," he muttered.

"Damn straight."

He helped her through the crack in the window, Emily's feet accidentally connecting with his face more than once. Finally she managed to wriggle all the way inside, only to fall unceremoniously on her face. She got to her feet and swallowed a scream.

The place was absolutely demolished. Desks were thrown about, glass shattered, anything useful torn to shreds. Papers were strewn about the floor and the phone had been wrenched off its hook. The radio and fax machine were broken down as well. On the walls the word "DIE" was written over and over again a bright red substance that she hoped down to her bones was paint.

Her heart was speeding up again. Her fingers were beginning to go numb. But that was from the cold. It was. It was.

"...Emily...? Everything okay in there?"

Emily came back to herself and walked back to the door, doing her best to still her shaking hands. She should have kept her meds on her. Shouldn't have hidden them from everyone. Shouldn't have been so damn proud.

Her hands trembled on the handle and she cursed under her breath. A few jerks of the handle later she finally got it open, and Chris slipped hesitantly in, taking a look around and adjusting has glasses as though the carnage before him was just the result of faulty lenses.

"...Holy shit," he breathed.

"No kidding," Emily replied, "God, everything's, like, so busted up."

"The fucker probably knew we were gonna try and get help," Chris said. He bit his lip. "Shit. We left Ashley alone, Em. She's going back to the lodge by herself. Shit, shit, shit..."

"She'll be fine," Emily snapped, a little too quickly. Chris bristled. "Look," she told him, more mindful of her tone this time, "if we don't figure something out soon, none of us are gonna make it out alive, so just...just focus, okay?" Her words came out between shaky, shuddering breaths. She clenched her fists. Not now. Breakdowns were for locked stalls in empty girls' bathrooms or fruitless four-in-the-morning cramming sessions in her bedroom. Private. Solitary. Not when she needed more than ever to be present and quick on her feet.

Chris looked desperately toward the unmoving cable car, suspended on the line a few yards away from them.

"Don't suppose you could use your righteous gymnastics powers to get over there, Em?"

Emily looked at the car and made a face.

"Not unless I learn how to fly tonight."

Chris sighed, all exasperated, like she was the problem here. Emily fought the urge to punch him.

They wandered around a bit more before coming upon an equally trashed control room. Emily gave the controls a cursory test and came up empty. Everything was broken, or else missing the right key. In all likelihood, the killer had those keys now. Fantastic.

"Uh, hey, Em, come check this out."

Emily looked up. Chris was standing by a map of the mountain. On it was the lodge, the station, an imposing-looking complex she recognized as the fabled sanitorium, and, further up the mountain, a fire tower.

"There's a fire tower," he said after a moment.

"Thank you, Chris. I have eyes."

"No, I mean, d'you think the tower would have, like, a radio or something?"

"Oh my God, you're right," she said, mildly annoyed with herself for not putting two and two together sooner. "We can use the radio to call for help."

The walked down from the operator room and brought down a ladder. Emily swallowed. The only way out was around, and around meant facing certain doom while they made their way along the icy, narrow rim of the station.

Before they got going, Emily caught sight of a flashlight and snatched it gratefully. That was something, at least.

The two of them made their way around the edge. Emily did her best to keep her eyes forward. She felt her heart drop into her stomach and make a home there. Her palms were sweating so heavily that she nearly lost her grip on the flashlight.

Emily had never been a fan of heights. She'd spent the cable car ride up the mountain holding tight to Matt's hand and privately mourning the loss of her dignity. She shuffled awkwardly around the rim, Chris right behind, as the blue-black pit loomed underneath her, ready to swallow her up. Her foot skidded on an icy patch and she fell forward with a yelp. Chris stumbled and tried to grab her but her missed and nearly fell with her. Emily grabbed tight to the ledge, feeling the tug of gravity on her dangling legs and clenching the rim with all her might. Timidly, Chris reached out a hand, and she grabbed it and pulled herself up.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Oh, stellar," she grumbled, "Totally didn't just almost die there or anything."

They made the rest of the way around the station in silence. Emily felt dangerously faint more than once, but kept shuffling along, determined not to look down.

"Holy cannoli," she breathed, "Thank God that's over."

Chris raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, shut up," she muttered, "It's probably something I picked up from you, you dork."

They made their way down the stairs and back onto the slopes. Chris was quiet again, his eyes glazed over a little. Emily tightened her grip on the flashlight and focused on her breathing.

"...Should we, uh, maybe think of some backup plans?" Chris asked, sounding determined to escape from the spiraling prison of his thoughts.

"If the radio doesn't work, you mean?"

"...Yeah."

Emily thought. Climbing the mountain definitely wasn't an option.

"If there are flares in the fire tower, we could try those," she said, "Or, you know, something like that."

"Yeah..."

Nothing else seemed plausible. They could try to barricade themselves in the lodge, but the only one she trusted with any sort of weapon was Mike, and he and Jess were still AWOL. Jesus, what if the killer already got to them? What if Jess had already died hating her?

Emily shook her head to clear it. No use thinking unproductive thoughts like that.

They passed by a nearby cliff, Emily doing her best to drown the anxious thoughts parading around in her brain. The snow was falling harder now, the flakes coming down like little white knives on her skin. She winced.

Suddenly, Chris broke stride and started shaming, zombie-like, toward the cliff. Emily blinked in bewilderment.

"Chris...?" she called to him. He didn't appear to hear her.

If this was some kind of acute stress reaction, then it needed to stop right fucking now. Emily strode over to him and grabbed his arm, trying to wrench him back to sense, but he wriggled free easily and made his way toward the edge of the cliff.

Emily's heart just about stopped cold.

"Chris...hey..." she said, trying and failing to keep her voice level, "I know tonight's been rough, but you gotta...you can't just..."

Chris ignored her. He leaned over the ledge, as if inspecting something of great fascination.

His legs bent slightly.

"CHRIS!"

\------------

Sam's last words to her had been fire. The two of them, fighting for the first and last time. What had the fight even been about? Beth tried to recall but couldn't. It couldn't have been anything big. Perhaps the magnitude of the fight stemmed from the fact that they'd never fought before. An explosion over a thousand suppressed misunderstandings never talked about. Death of a thousand cuts.

But after she'd fallen, after she'd awoken as a creature of silver light and freezing air, all she'd wanted was to see her lover, that human drop of sunshine, again. To apologize. To be warm in her arms. She was so cold now. She would never know warmth again. But perhaps she could hold her love again. All she had to do was kill her conscience.

Her brother came into the room in which Sam hid from the world and made away with her things. Her foolish, misguided brother. Doing such terrible things for no good reason.

Must run in the family, she supposed.

Her beloved emerged from her bath and fumed at the thought of her friends humiliating her like this. She had a towel wrapped around herself as she walked through the lodge, calling out to her absent friends to stop the prank they had not pulled. The poor, confused girl. Beth did not understand why her brother had chosen her to torment, could not guess what storms brewed in his troubled mind. She could offer little comfort to Sam as her fear grew, but she watched in anticipatory silence, flickering behind her head like a patch of static, almost visible, never quite.

Sam ventured nervously into the theatre. The footage of her brother's quite-expertly faked death played and Sam cried out in horror. Josh's distorted voice filled the room, making her, and Beth could do nothing, nothing.

Her brother, masked and bloodied, emerged and made chase. Sam ran, oh how she ran, but she could only runs so far and fight so hard before she was caught. It was not her territory after all. Josh knew this place better than even his own family. He'd boasted of it, back when Beth and her sister still had their lives. Even after death, Beth and Hannah had stayed in the mines and in the mountain skies, seldom venturing into the home of painful memories.

Josh caught up with her once, twice. The first time, Sam had a bat. The second time she did not. Josh breathed an apology that was almost sincere and Sam's eyes fluttered and closed as the loathsome gas polluted her lungs.

Beth could have sworn, in the instant before Sam fell into unconsciousness, that she caught a flicker of her in her view.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already miss Jess honestly. I can't wait to write Spooky Ghost Jess in the next few chapters.  
> As you can guess, the ghosts have kind of a weird sense of morality. Usually, the longer a ghost has been dead, the more detached they are from human ethics and their own conscience. Hence, Beth's hypocrisy in calling out Josh for terrorizing the others (even though that is pretty bad) when she and her big sis are plotting to literally kill their friends.  
> Anyway, hope this chapter was alright! More lovely spookiness to come.  
> Thanks for reading! Drop a comment if you liked it!


	7. Trauma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets pretty bloody, so be warned.

_He was twelve, on Mount Washington for the first time. It was early summer, the sky as blue as a patch of delphiniums in full bloom. A warm, sweet breeze from the north ruffled his hair. Birds called distantly from the shelter of the woods. He was running, young and full of tireless energy, after his best friend as the two chased each other, devoid of all cares, through a field of fresh grass and mountain wildflowers. He was just on the edge of his growth spurt, soon to leave the body of childhood, but he wouldn't grow old and boring without a fight._

_He shouted, enjoying the sound of his voice on the air, uninhibited, as he bounded after Josh. It was an absurd notion, a game of tag with only two people, but there wasn't anyone else around them to judge. Just two carefree young boys and the hot summer sun._

_Josh skidded as he turned on his heels, ducking into a copse of trees. Chris sped after him, diving headlong into the tangle of trees.  He brushed branches aside as he searched. He paused, listening. The he heard, faintly, a muffled giggle from a small, barely noticeable ravine, covered in grasses and weeds and hidden by saplings. Some ninja he was. Chris smirked as he bent low and crept through the underbrush, preparing to pounce on his best friend. He was just shy of the shallow ravine, the top of Josh's untidy dark hair just peeking out of it, when his arm caught on a branch. He tried to tug himself free, but the branch only held him harder, more stubbornly. He wrapped his other hand around the brach to pull it off, only to have that hand restrained by another branch. Chris panicked. But before he could yelp for Josh, a strange voice called out to him, distantly, as though through a wall of water._

_"...Chris..."_

_The branches shook him. Chris blinked._

_"...Chris...!"_

_The warm June air got suddenly colder and harsher. He was shaken again._

_"CHRIS!"_

Chris snapped awake. He was nineteen again, and caked in February snow. Emily had her hands on her shoulders, and she was shaking him none-too-gently.

"Agh...Em...?" he croaked.

Emily took her hands off him and wrapped them around herself, shivering a little.

"Goddamn it, Christopher, you scared the shit out of me!" she scolded him. Chris peered to his left and nearly jolted. He was about three feet away from a straight drop off a very high cliff to what would almost certainly be his death.

"Wh...what...? Jesus, what the fuck?"

Emily was looking at him like he was insane. She probably wasn't that far off.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," she said, "The sooner we get to that fire tower, the better."

"Y-yeah..."

They trudged up the mountainside in uneasy silence, winding their way up the path and shielding their faces from the whipping winds of the storm. Chris looked ahead and noticed Emily shuddering ahead of him and considered offering her a jacket. But, knowing her, she'd probably mistake his offering for pity. She'd always been like that, for as long as he'd known her. Back when they'd been studying for their SAT's Em had practically become a hermit, burying herself in practice tests and study materials. He'd come upon her in the public library once, hunched over her desks in one of the reading rooms, sobbing to herself. One she'd spotted him, she'd practically chased him out with a flaming sword.

Chris thought of his numerous late-night study sessions with Ashley, her diligently taking notes and annotating her textbooks, him pretending to pay attention and sending Josh obnoxious Snapchats under the table. Afterward the two of them would go to a cozy little coffee shop close to the library and laugh and joke and nerd out as they wolfed down fresh-baked cafe pastries. Now Ash was heading back to the lodge all by herself, with a sadistic killer on her heels. Jesus Christ, what had they been thinking?

Josh and Ashley's panicked screaming suddenly burst into his mind uninvited, the both of them helpless and horrified, sure that the other would be picked over them, while Chris sweated and sobbed over a lever as the whir of a massive rotating saw drowned out all sense and that awful monster laughed and laughed and laughed—

A sudden bright light snapped him back to the present. Chris cursed under his breath. It took several moments for his vision to clear enough for him to recognize the source of the light.

"Ugh, it's friggin' bright!" Emily yelled.

"Looks like one of those motion-sensor lights," Chris said, "Washingtons had 'em installed a few years back, I think."

"Oh, great, like we needed to add blindness to tonight's list of problems," Emily grumbled.

"Hey now, you have no right to talk to me about blindness, young lady."

"Whatever. And don't 'young lady' me, I'm older than you."

"By, like, a month."

"Counts."

They reached the foot of the tower. Chris thought Emily looked a bit paler as she looked up the tall, half-frozen ladder.

"You go ahead," Chris told her. "That way, if you fall, you'll have me as a nice, soft pillow."

"How noble," Emily remarked. She walked up to the ladder and, after a moment or two of hesitation, dropped the axe in the snow and began to climb. Chris flooded suit, swallowing hard as he began to ascend. His hands cried out in protest as he gripped the cold, unforgiving metal in his bare hands. He  _really_ should've worn gloves. The ground beneath him got further and further away from him and Chris felt his stomach fall lower and lower in his body with every wrung he climbed. Considering he'd almost plummeted to his death at least once tonight, he wasn't exactly pumped to be braving yet another perilously high place. Thoughts of Josh came to him and he forced them back into some neglected corner of his mind. Now was not the time. He could grieve when the rest of his friends weren't in moral danger. But try as he might he couldn't keep the juxtaposition of his best friend, age twelve, smiling and bright, next to the image of his bloodied remains, intestines falling out like unraveled yarn. He swallowed a sob and kept climbing.

After what felt like an eternity, the two reached the top and shivered for a moment in the deserted control room. Emily put down the flashlight and flipped the trap door closed. They looked around. It was dark, the only light coming from the faint, ambient moonlight through the windows. The place was pretty standard-issue, with a functional-looking radio and a desk, phone and printer off to the side. He guessed the phone was a no-go, but the radio held the promise of rescue. Only—

"How much you wanna bet there's no power?" he asked. Emily ignored him and walked over to the radio and toyed with the switches and dials for a moment or two.

"Damn it, come on," she groaned.

"No power?"

"Congratulations, Christopher, you're a fucking psychic. Now come on, there's gotta be, like, a switch or something somewhere we can throw."

They poked around the interior for a bit, finding little of interest. Chris frowned when he came upon a missing poster for Hannah. If only she knew how he'd failed her big brother. How he'd failed her. He thought back to that night one year ago, when he'd been sodden with cheap liquor and the idiocy of youth. When he'd been so careless he'd let two of his beloved friends, his honorary little sisters, get swallowed up by a blizzard, never to be seen again.

He looked over his shoulder and saw Emily looking at the poster, a haunted look in her eyes. For a very small part of a very small second, he wanted to punch her, to scream at her, to hurl insults and accusations and blame for everything that had happened. If only so it could just be someone else's fault.

"Nothing in here," he said at last, "Guess we should check outside."

Emily said nothing but nodded in agreement. She walked with him over to the door, wincing a little as he threw it open and the gale hit them both hard in the face. The storm was getting exponentially worse. They'd be lucky if help would even be able to make it up the mountain in these conditions. They made their way around the back of the tower, Emily spotting a red metallic box marked "EMERGENCY FLARES". Sure enough, a red-orange plastic flare gun lay inside, ready for use. Emily took it and fired it onto the air. The clouds began to bleed vermilion where the flare hit.

"That ought to get someone's attention," she muttered. "Hopefully someone who isn't a psychopath."

On the other side of the tower was a small fuse box, Chris flipped a switch and heard the satisfying purr of the power coming on. The lights snapped on and shone defiantly against the oppressive winter night.

"Damn, finally," he mumbled, "Something goes our way. Imagine that."

"Let's hope it's the start of a better trend," Emily replied, and he followed her back into the safety of the tower's interior. Emily made a beeline for the radio, turning the dial until the crackling static turned into barely audible human voices.

"—Ranger service for Blackwood County. Over."

"Hello?" Emily asked, her words a panicked rush, "Hello, can you hear us? We need urgent help? Please help us! Over!"

There was static for what felt like a solid five minutes. Chris felt his hands begin to shake. Finally, blessedly, the ranger's voice returned.

"Hello...? Your signal is very weak. Please repeat your message, as I am not able to hear what you are saying. Please speak slowly and clearly. Over." 

Emily's voice trembled as she forced out a message.

"M-my name is Emily. Emily T-Tanaka-Clarke. We're on Blackwood Mountain...by the ski lodge. There's a murderer after us and he's already killed one of our friends. You have to help us, please, please help us!"

Another agonizing thirty seconds of silence.

"I read you, ma'am. Please do not leave your position. We will send helicopters to get you as soon as the storm has subsided, over."

Chris and Emily bristled at the same time.

"What?" Emily stammered, "What, w-when? How long?"

"Dawn, at the earliest. Not until dawn, over—"

The voice was suddenly drowned in static, louder and angrier than simple white noise. There seemed to be something under it, like a sleeping monster, breathing hot, shining breaths. Snarling in its slumber. Dreaming of prey.

Chris's heart skipped a beat.

"H-hello...? Sir...?" Emily nearly whispered. The static grew louder still. A high-pitched, electrical whine rang in his ears, sending shockwaves of pain through his head. He winced and covered his ears, but the sound only grew louder. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the printer going haywire, sprinting out copy after copy of the same poster. One of the copies landed by his feet and he nearly gagged. It was Beth, but it didn't look like Beth. Her face was pale white and horribly distorted, her mouth pulled back in a twisted grimace, her eyes sunken and flat and dead.

The radio crackled to life once more. But it wasn't the ranger's voice this time.

_"A distress signal. You two are adorable."_

It was impossible. Fucking unbelievable. It had to be some kind of manipulation, preexisting audio clips manipulated into a new, false message.

Because there was no way in hell Beth Washington was speaking to them right now.

 _"I have to say, I admire your resourcefulness. Especially you, Em. You really haven't changed a bit, have you?"_ There was poison in the dead girl's words. Emily trembled. Her hand was frozen on the dial.

_"But we can't let you ditch us. Not again. Nobody's leaving us. Ever."_

"What the hell," Emily breathed, "Wh-wh-what the hell..." She was hyperventilating. Chris wanted to go help her, but found himself rooted to the spot. The lights overhead surged with electricity, growing brighter and brighter.

_"You're all ours now. Ours. We won't let anyone else have you."_

"Emily," Chris said, "Em, turn off the radio."

Emily didn't appear to hear him. She remained rooted to the spot, her hand on the dial, a look of horror frozen on her pale face.

"Em—"

 _"It's okay, Emily,"_ Beth's voice purred through the radio,  _"Don't be frightened. We're going to make you better. Kinder. You won't miss your body once you're ours. Promise."_

The electrical whine got higher in pitch, the droning tone snarling through his brain and rupturing his consciousness, through his blurring vision, he could see Emily's limbs jerking, her knees shaking. Her every breath was deep and pained and ragged.

"Em?! Emily, get away from the radio! Emily! Em...!"

Emily staggered backward, her limbs heavy and puppet-like. Her head twisted backward, almost turning all the way around. Chris could've sworn he could've heard something in her neck crack horribly. There was a slashed-on smile on her face.

"Aw, Chris..." she crooned, " _Em's not here_."

The lights all around him flared up to impossible brightness. Through the bright light he could almost see her hanging slightly in the air like a marionette, her feet barely brushing against the floor. Electricity crackled through the air. Through the chaos, he thought he heard the deep, terrible sound of something metallic groaning.

The lights flared and shorted out, the power flashing out. Emily dropped to the ground, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The groaning continued. Suddenly, he realized what was happening, but before he could run to grab Emily's prone body, the world began to shift sideways. Chris instinctively grabbed tight to a metal outcropping on the wall. Emily's body fell limply and slammed onto a window pane.

"Em!" he shouted, hanging from his perch. Emily stirred and pushed herself up a little. As soon as she began to realize what was happening, she began to whimper and shake.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God...!"

She looked up just in time to see a printer fall and nearly make contact with her head before she rolled out of its way. It shattered the window underneath her, sending Emily plummeting outside. Chris yelled.

The tower continued to groan and crash as it toppled over. Chris could see Em, holding tight to a rebar for dear life, as the tower fell further and further into the gaping back pit of the crevasse below them.

With a final, sickening crunch, the tower broke off its foundation and toppled into the pit.

\------------

Jessica had never thought much about death.

There'd been no reason, frankly. Death wasn't supposed to be on her radar yet. Death happened to grandparents and pets. Not kids her age.

Well, it wasn't supposed to, anyway.

If she'd been asked what she thought happened after death she would've shrugged and changed the subject. Death was strange and scary and uninteresting.

She couldn't even remember how she died, that was the bitch of it. One moment she was screaming at an eerily dead-eyed Emily, the next she was nothing but memories and cold air drifting over her own corpse.

But it was okay. It was. Hannah said it would be. Hannah and Beth would make everything okay. They could all be together, everyone, unburdened and aimless and free. Hannah had told her these things and she had trusted her. Had to. Had to invest her essence in something.

It was all you could do, when you're nothing. Cling to something, believe in something, and hope that doing so made you something again.

Beth was with her now, her dear, sweet friend of old, the girl who'd patched up her skinned knees and gone bully-hunting with her and Em. Beth was holding her, whispering to her.

 _I'll take care of Chris,_ she whispered,  _Emily is yours. Bring her over._

Jessica wanted Mike too, but Hannah had forbidden her from going near him. It was her price to pay. Mike was all Hannah's.

But she could have her best friend back. Could break her body and cleanse her mind and make her remember the time before.

Revenge would be brutal and necessary. But then she could take Emily and remake her. She had that power now.

She watched as Chris futilely reached for her, as Emily fell, as Chris just barely laughed himself off the crumbling structure, landing with a painful thud on a nearby ledge. Emily's screams echoed and faded.

 _The fall won't kill her,_ Beth told her,  _Follow her. Take her and break her and make her ours._

And so Jessica drifted down, into the darkness and fire, like a damned soul falling helpless into Hell.

\------------

Ashley was not brave. She wasn't strong or willful or good under pressure. She'd been the kid who'd slept with a night light until she was ten, who'd jumped and whimpered at every loud noise, who assumed that anything and everything was perpetually out to get her. She was not cut out for exploring dark places and hunting for clues on her own, especially when there were killers afoot. Perhaps with Chris it could've been bearable; he was the voice of reason in a world that seemed to have none, a methodical rock in the churning sea of her anxiety. He'd always been there for her, even when she was in the throes of panic over something utterly inconsequential. He cared for the others so passionately and fully, even when they were being total asses. Ashley doubted she had that same capacity for compassion and forgiveness.

The pot was wearing off some. She still felt a bit out of it, but at least she wasn't crawling up walls or laughing at pathetically unfunny jokes anymore. She hardly ever did things like that, but in the heat of the moment, when her nerves were just unbearable and the darkness seemed to be closing in on her, she was desperate for any source of relief.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The candles, as far as she was aware, were new. They seemed to be going out of their own accord whenever she passed them. She trembled at each change but tried to keep her composure. It was terribly dark in the foyer of the lodge, the filtered moonlight the only source of light as she walked slowly and hesitantly to what she was sure would be her bloody death. Ash briefly considered just hightailing it out of there, but Sam was waiting for her. She had to find her and get her out of the lodge. Then they'd find Matt and Chris and Em and they'd all get the fuck out of dodge.

Ash tried to pull open a heavy-looking wooden door. It snapped shut on its own. Ashley yelped and jumped back. Her heart was about ready to explode. She took a few deep breaths and tried again. The door yielded this time, revealing a dimly-lit hallway covered in cobwebs and unused equipment. Ashley swallowed, and entered. Every thud, clatter and clang sent her spiraling, calling for absent friends, praying she'd somehow magically end up anywhere else but in this moment, but she pressed on. Doubling back in the dark felt like suicide. And besides, she more shadows and pillars and disused tables lying about the more places she had to hide.

Something fluttered softly against the concrete floor behind her. Ashley wheeled around just in time to catch a pale, waif-like figure with long dark hair pass right through a wall.

Ashley broke out in a cold sweat. There's no way this was real. No way.

She walked further into the bowels of the lodge, feeling increasingly like she was being watched. The eyes of someone with a fucked up sense of humor were on her back, coaxing fear and panic out of her and into the air like a fire under an ice block. In her time in Salem she'd grown used to the leering stares of other students, the ones who saw her as an easy target, someone they could easily spook and get a rise out of for kicks. She was forever the victim of jumpscares and fake love letters and loud, boisterous boys making a game out of screaming like banshees and chasing her down the school hallways. Had she protested, had she just told someone what was happening or that she was terrified rather than amused, maybe the pranks would've eventually stopped. But she never had, had learned from a life in the palm of her furious, unpredictable father's hand that it was best to just shut up and go along with things and so she'd endured the ridicule in silence, letting resentment fester in her like a disease, turning her insides to putrid rot. But of course, for someone so often victimized, she'd taken great pleasure in pulling one on someone else, hadn't she? Just to be part of a group, to be accepted for once.

Or maybe, after all the times she'd been hurt, she just wanted to hurt someone.

She spotted a camera, knocked it down, stepped on it with her foot a few times, kept walking.

Something flew over her head, she yelled, jumped, and staggered forward, nearly tripping over an ancient rocking horse. Once she regained her composure, she frowned at the peeling paint and the warped wood of the horse. She looked around. All about the basement were disused toys of the Washington siblings, strewn about and forgotten. It was like being in a museum of a forgotten, happier time. A memorial to a prematurely slaughtered innocence.

Her shoe connected with a small, metal key and sent it skittering across the floor. Curiously, she picked it up. A nearby dollhouse had a keyhole the looked to be about the right size. Hesitantly, she slipped the key into the lock, feeling suddenly like an intruder, and opened the house. Inside were ten dolls, all lined up in separate rooms. A few were bent over in positions of mock sleep. The rest were crowded around one cowering doll, the object of painful ridicule. One doll held a little plastic camera.

Ashley's stomach hit the cold cement floor.

It was them. All ten of them. On the night of the prank. Matching hairstyles and all.

There was no way in hell the killer knew this much about the prank the previous year.

Unless.

But before she could speculate any further, one of the dolls moved of its own accord. Its head cocked and its eyes snapped open, as if trying to see into her heart and find the moss and mold that had taken root there. Ashley staggered backward and was about to let the house be when a bright pink book caught her eye. A diary. Hannah's, she knew almost intuitively. There wasn't much of interest in the book; just pages upon pages about Mike. Here and there there'd be news about Josh's health or Beth and Sam's relationship or a rant or two about Emily, but no major revelations. Something twisted horribly in Ashley's stomach. They'd killed two girls that night. And Ashley had cheered it on.

Then she got to the last entry. There was no date.

_My friends are coming back! I've missed them a lot. But they're going to stay this time. We'll be all together again. Family. I can't wait._

The killer had studied Hannah's handwriting. Had flipped through her journal and read her thoughts and mimicked her penmanship, just for the sake of fucking with his prey. Ashley gritted her teeth. Whoever was behind this was a sick, amoral fuck and they were going to pay big time once they got the cops up here.

A door creaked open behind her. Without thinking, she walked through the opening and into another drafty hallway.

\------------

Hell was all around him. Falling fire and creaking metal and the screams of lost souls.

Chris was alone, his head throbbing, his knees screaming for relief. He had no idea where the fuck he was. The tower was in ruins. Emily was most likely dead ( _two dead friends in one night and it was all his fault_ ). He had no idea of help was even actually coming, or if the whole set-up in the fire tower had just been some kind of fucked up ruse, a trap set up by the killer to fuck with them one last time before sending them screaming to their deaths. In his mind's eye he saw Emily, limp and hovering just above the ground, a horrible smirk on her pallid face. Deeply, irrationally, he hoped the whole night was just a nightmare.

It was certainly a more plausible explanation than anything he'd come up with so far.

He wandered aimlessly through the mine tunnel, searching for anything that would get him out. He tried not to think of the people he'd have to tell. Emily's mother. Matt. Mr. and Mrs. Washington. The police. All their relatives and high school friends.  _Josh and Em are gone and I killed them. I chose wrong. I chose wrong. I chose wrong._

Something shifted just out of his clear view. Chris wheeled around. Nothing.

Then he felt something ice cold and feathery tickle the back of his neck. Like light, cold fingers running up his back and neck until they got to his head and nestled in his hair. The hand slid back down and tightened around the ridges of his spine.

And pulled.

Chris jerked backward, his arms moving like puppet's arms on strings, his back leading the rest of his body in an awkward backward slide. His feet dragged along the dirt and gravel and there was somebody  _controlling_ him and he couldn't move or fight or scream or—

— _he was in third grade, taking quietly but eagerly with his new_ _seat mate, who had wild green eyes, full of wonderful, dangerous ideas and boyish schemes. Never in his life had he met someone so bold, so caring, so deeply, wonderfully different in ways he couldn't properly articulate._

_He was was eight years old and for the first time in his short and lonely life he had a playmate, a partner in crime. A best friend._

_And they had each other and Josh's sisters and Sam and Jessica and all the others who came in later and they were a solid group of wonderful weirdness and he wouldn't trad these assholes for the world and they were all so young and free and happy and—_

There was blood in his mouth. He tried to spit, but his mouth wasn't working right. His jaw was numb and wouldn't close right. His tongue twitched and jerked in his mouth and swam in the rising tides of blood.

His feet were not touching the ground. His limbs were growing cold. Somewhere along the line his glasses had slipped off his head.

Right out of the corner of his blurry, rapidly darkening vision, he could just see something beautiful, impossible, and very, very bright.

A soft June breeze hit his face as his life bled out into the dirty air.

\------------

This place was even more decrepit, with wooden debris falling onto the half-rotted floor. Ashley walked a short way, not entirely sure what exactly it was she hoped to find, before she came upon a small table, covered in junk, an empty doll's head, and a pair of scissors. Thankful for a weapon of any kind, ashley pocketed them and walked on, a little more confident than before.

She wondered where exactly it was she'd ended up. It seemed beyond strange that a swanky mountain chalet would have a secret passage leading into the real-life equivalent of the Shrieking Shack. The passages got narrower and darker and finally led into a strange, foul-smelling room in the basement of what Ash had come to realize was an aging, abandoned hotel. She wrinkled her nose and wandered nervously among what appeared to be slabs of rank meat.

Then her flashlight splashed a pool of bright white light upon a corkboard covered in pictures. Of them. The eight of them, all unaware. Mike's picture had the eyes scratched out. Ashley shivered and briefly feared the worst. But Mike was tough as hell, wasn't he? All her friends were. Except for her. The tiny, defenseless habit wandering alone in a serial-killer infested lodge. And it looked like she'd stumbled upon his hideout.

Her foot splashed in something. Ashley's stomach turned over. She looked down to find herself standing in a shallow pool of blood. A crimson trail led underneath a heavy-looking metal door.

_Oh shit. Oh God, Sam._

She wrenched open the door with a surge of adrenaline and flung herself into an even darker, even fouler-smelling room. At the end of the trail was a metal chair, and tied to it, a pale girl in nothing but an eerily white bath towel. Ashley felt a wave of dread overcome her as she darted to the chair and put two fingers on her friend's cold neck. After a breathless moment she felt a pulse, the beats slow and far apart, but there. Ashley breathed a sigh of relief.

Then she heard heavy footsteps directly behind her. Shelby shot up and turned around just in time to find the killer in full view. His mask glowered down at her and his every movement was slow and deliberate, like a walking corpse. A revenant, risen from a shallow grave to enact vengeance for a violent death.

Electric ice shot through her veins. Ashley fumbled for a half-second, then drew the scissors, holding them menacingly in front of her. The killer was unimpressed. He swiped a hand to knock the scissors away, but she leapt back, keeping a steady grip on her only defense. A horrible impulse rapped impatiently on the doorway of her brain. But she couldn't. Couldn't. Not even for him.

The killer leered forward. Ashley heard Josh's screams of agony echoing in the back of her mind, felt the phantom splatter of his blood hitting her face again.

The impulse kicked down the door of her mind and entered. The masked man closed in on her. Ash waited one more half-second, then ducked to the right, struck out her arm like a viper, and dug the twin blades of the scissors into her assailant's neck. He screamed and staggered back, his hand reaching futilely for the object lodged in his throat. His screams became guttural. A red waterfall began to pour out from behind the mask, staining his clothes and pooling onto the floor. His limbs spasmed. He tried one last time to speak, but his voice was forever drowned in his own blood.

He fell backward with a wet, sickening thud. He twitched once, twice. Then he lay still.

Ashley did not breathe. Her extremities were going numb, her vision blurring at the edges.

Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.

But she had to, didn't she? She had to. He would've killed her. He'd already killed Josh. Maybe Mike too. But she'd done it. She'd beaten him. Saved everyone. The mouse that killed the cat.

The murderer's blood pooled on the floor. He was lifeless, she knew, and no longer a threat. But she couldn't shake the feeling that approaching the corpse would reanimate it somehow. Make it even crueler, more violent. But she wanted to know, had to know, who it was who had done this. Who had completed the trio of dead Washington siblings, all robbed of life before they could legally drink.

Curiosity overwhelming her, Ashley approached the body of the killer, took a deep, shuddering breath, removed his mask—

—and screamed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel I might get some questions about this, so let me clarify that I have absolutely nothing against Chris or Josh. They're both wonderful, complex characters. But their deaths just made the most sense in the context of how I want the rest of the story to go.  
> Also, as you may guess, they will still play a crucial role in this story. They've just...switched teams.  
> That's the great thing about having the main antagonists be ghosts.  
> (I didn't have much time to edit this piece so there may be minor spelling/grammatical errors. Sorry!)  
> Next on my list is the next chapter of "The Widows", which should be out by early April at the very latest.  
> Feedback is always appreciated.  
> Thanks for reading!


	8. Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Depravity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a fun time! We got ghosts, skeletons and old-timey racism for the whole family!

Screaming.

Terrible, anguished screaming coming from somewhere in the black velvet darkness. A horror and grief more miserable than anything she'd ever heard before.

Sam's lids struggled open.

A familiar silhouette hunched over a shadowed body, prone on the concrete floor. A shallow black pool sat, fresh and reeking, swallowing up the ground beneath them. The sobbing came from a girl Sam knew, and the name she chanted belonged to another friend. Something in Sam's chest froze over with thorny black ice.

"No, no, no! Josh, NO! No...Josh...Josh...w-why..."

But Josh was already dead, wasn't he? Torn in half by a rusty, rotating blade of impossible size; his viscera leaking out onto the floor like candy from a piñata. He'd died and died again, once by a masked madman, and once by...

"Ashley...?"

Ashley flinched and ducked her head, as if trying not to be seen.

"S-Sam, I...I swear I...I d-didn't mean to...!"

Sam leaned over as far as she could strain the ropes that held her back. The chair's ancient wheels scraped along the ground. In the failing light she could just make out the heavy, skid-marked boots of the man that had pursued her.

"You...you killed him?"

"I didn't know! I swear I didn't know, Sam! Josh—the-the-the ma-maniac, he k-killed Josh but he-he was Josh and I though he w-was gonna kill me and I, I—"

She collapsed into sobs. Sam's mind reeled. Nothing made sense, unless—

"Are...are you sure it's really him...?"

Ashley bristled.

"Of course I'm sure...!"

"I'm just saying," Sam said, careful to keep her voice level, "That—that it seems weird to me that he'd be in two places at once. Maybe the guy was just trying to...uh...to fuck with us or something."

"Sam," Ashley sighed, "I know it's him. I'm sure it is. I just...I don't... _what the hell is going on...!?"_

Ashley doubled over, nearly catching her hair in the blood. Something sliver and scarlet glinted on the floor beside her.

"Ash...are those...?"

"I'm sorry...I'm so sorry..."

"Ash, c'mon! Please, you've—you gotta hold it together, okay? We'll figure this out. Can you, uh, can you just grab those scissors and cut me loose?"

Ashley turned her head slowly to face the weapon that had clattered to the floor. She reached out to it like she was attempting to calm a wild animal. Her fingers tightened around the blade and her hands, now covered in bright, wet blood, trembled. Shakily, she stood and walked haltingly over to Sam, nearly slipping in the pool of blood once as she made her way. Sam felt her body jerk to the side as Ashley wheeled the chair around none-too-gently, grunting with the effort. Sam stood stiffly, wringing the soreness out of her wrists. Then, with more fear and trepidation than she'd ever felt in her life, she moved over to the corpse and took a good look at the all-to-familiar face.

It was Josh. It could be no one else but Josh. The wide green eyes, now faded, could be none other than the ones that had filled with mirth while he'd laughed with Sam in the basement. His face was a pale mockery of itself, stained in scarlet and trapped forever in an expression of shock and betrayal and perhaps the faintest twinge of regret.

Sam felt a stream of bile crawl up her throat. Through more will than she knew she possessed she kept herself from vomiting. Nothing made any sense.

Ashley sobbed and sniffed where she stood. The scissors hung loose in her hand. Sam stood and wrapped her arms carefully around her.

"Let's get out of here, Ash. Clean you up. Get us both a change of clothes. Try to figure this out."

Ashley made a little affirmative whimper into Sam's shoulder. Together they walked slowly out of the basement, jumping at every shadow, until they were back in the lodge. They went upstairs, grabbed Sam's pack from the bathroom, and walked into Hannah's bedroom. Ashley went into the bathroom to shower off the blood while Sam changed into the spare clothes in her pack and, after, sat on her best friend's bed, surrounded by the remnants of a life ripped away. The room was practically untouched, the teenage detritus left sitting right where it had a year ago. Curiously Sam thumbed through some of the debris, finding among it a printed out compatibility test for Hannah and Mike. The results were not in Hannah's favor. Sam swallowed a bitter sigh as she remembered how often her friend had spoken about Mike, how she'd practically worshiped him, how all the unrequited romantic feelings Sam had thought she'd buried tugged at the back of her brain as she'd watched her best friend talk and talk. Sam hadn't been in a place to complain. She'd been with Beth. She'd loved Beth. It had angered her beyond compare that the old feelings for Hannah had remained under the paint of her sister.

Hannah was gone. Beth was gone. Her two best friends in the world, forever lost to the world.

She heard the door creak open. Ashely stood there in the doorway, gazing upon her with a look Sam had never seen on her face before. Her eyes flickered down to the clothes Ashley wore and she realized that they looked uncomfortably familiar.

Yoga pants. Hiking boots. An oversized, slightly ratty flannel that Sam had borrowed on numerous occasions.

She raised a shaking hand and pointed to the clothes.

"Those are Beth's..."

Ashley looked down at the clothes, then back up at Sam. She smiled.

"I know that, Sam," she said, her voice inhumanly serene, "I've missed them. They feel kinda big now, though."

"But you can't just take someone's clothes, Ash. You...you know that. Don't you have your own?"

Ashley's smile turned to a harsh, bloodthirsty smirk. Her eyes were flat and cold.

"Samantha, darling," she purred, "It's not the clothes I stole."

\------------

Her mouth tasted like iron and her head hurt like hell. She couldn't remember how she'd gotten like this. Her arms where splayed out and her body felt heavy. There was something coiled, tight and painful, around her ankle. Her eyes fluttered open, only to be greeted with the sight of raining fire and groaning steel.

Either she'd somehow survived her fall into the mines, or her great aunt had been right about Hell.

"Oh shit! Oh my God! Oh Jesus!"

She looked up as far as she could. She was hanging by a single steel cable wrapped around her ankle. Blotting out the light of the night far above was the smoldering wreckage of the burning fire tower ( _burning fire tower. What a textbook example of irony_ ). Chris was nowhere in sight. Her head was pounding, her ears ringing. It took her several seconds to kick her brain into a higher gear.

Now what?

She craned her neck and looked up and forward, seeing a viable ledge before her. Calling upon all the gymnastics lessons she'd once detested, she began to swing back and forward, nervously, fearful of the cable snapping mid-arc. As she swung back and forth and her abdominal muscled burned with the effort she couldn't shake the bizarre feeling of being watched. Assessed. Judged.

With a grunt she swung over to the jutting, lateral latter fallen from the wreckage and heard the cable strain and snap. She arched her back and threw out her hands as she went into freewill, the world briefly slowing as the shaft yawned beneath her. Her hands wrapped tight around the wrung before her body plummeted into the shaft. Everything in her ached and groaned as she clambered to safety, dropping gracelessly from the latter onto the ledge. She sat, stunned, for a moment, long enough for a piece of falling debris to slice into her leg like a knife into a fresh Thanksgiving turkey. Emily whimpered and winced as her legs went tight to her chest and the rest of the tower crumbled into the pit.

_Pretty thing._

Emily bristled. A strange, foreign voice was whispering in her brain. A shiver ran all the way down her spine.

Stress-induced hallucinations. They happened. It was nothing.

She stood and searched the wreckage frantically for anything she could use. A fallen piece of wood and a barrel of oil caught her eye. She made her way over to the barrel, picking the chunk of wood up as she went. With her free hand she began to tear at the hem of her shirt, the soft sound of the fabric giving in sharp contrast to the overbearing sounds of ruin all around her.

"Ugh, God," she grumbled, "There goes six hundred bucks." She wrapped the cotton fabric twice around the wood and dipped the whole makeshift torch in the oil. "Better be worth it. I looked great in that top."

(She actually hadn't been a big fan of the shirt, but guys had told her she looked hot in it. And when guys liked how she looked they wanted to fuck her and when they wanted to fuck her they did what she wanted and when they did what she wanted she was powerful and in control and no one could see her cracks.)

She dipped the homemade torch in a bit of flaming rubble and took a second to make sure the fire caught hold. When it did, she held up the torch and turned around to face the dark unknown of the tunnels.

_And a smart one too._

Emily almost laughed. What a night to be losing her mind.

She pressed on through the caverns, her boots crunching the dirt underfoot. Despite the proximity to what was probably Hell itself, she was freezing. Splinters from the wood made a temporary home in the exposed flesh of her hand.

She  _really_ should've brought gloves.

Strange whispering echoed through the mines, or perhaps only in her head. She ran a hand through her hair with her free hand and came away with a handful of greying black strands ( _"It's a sure sign of stress," her doctor had told her. "Are you seeing anyone right now? A therapist?"_ ). Her injured leg moved stiffly as she limped into a larger passage. She staggered over to a rusted mine cart and, seeing a blocked off entryway in its path, set it loose. The cart smashed through the barrier with a satisfying  _crunch._ Beyond the broken barrier lay a larger chamber, filled with ancient debris and dust-covered mementos of what she supposed were the men who'd once worked in the mine. She rather doubted it was a terribly happy existence. An elevator lay near the back of the chamber. Half-heartedly, she tried it, then searched for a power source. A switchboard was visible on an elevated platform. The ancient, creaking ladder threatened collapse as she ascended. She placed the torch on the platform above her and sucked in a breath.

She climbed one more rung and the ladder fell completely off the platform, sending her careening down another shaft and into a dark, drafty pit. She cursed and spat dirt out of her mouth as she brought herself to her feet. She pulled out her phone and snapped on the light, the silvery white light bathing, to her horror, a massive pile of corpses, picked away to the bone. Emily screamed and swore.

She could've sworn she heard a hundred discordant voices laugh.

She barreled out of the makeshift crypt as fast as her ruined legs would carry her. About halfway through the shadowy tunnels her phone died on her, drowning her in darkness. Emily swallowed.

"Son of a bitch," she muttered.

 _How disrespectful,_ a strange voice whispered in her head,  _To think this is what young ladies have become._

 _Now, don't tell me you expect good manners from a Jap,_ another voice chimed in. Emily breathed out through her nose and fought the urge to talk back. That would  _really_ make her crazy, wouldn't it?

"Not talking to the creepy racist head voices," she said aloud, her voice tremulous and heavy with mirthless giggles, "N-nope. No. No. Ha."

The path branched off. A faint light glowed at the end of the left path. Emily walked down that path for a while, feeling her way along the rock, but soon she realized the light was getting no closer. She turned around, only to be met with solid rock.

"What the hell?" she breathed.

Emily turned around again and found herself at the branching paths again. She took the right one this time, trying not to panic.

She walked for what felt like hours. The darkness felt dense, almost alive.

Suddenly, the ground dropped out from under her. She screamed as her stomach dropped and her hands went out to break her fall.

She landed with a soft thud in yet another tunnel. Upon turning around, she found that the gap through which she'd fallen no longer existed.

_Least she's good for some fun._

Great. Now the voices were back.

Emily fought the urge to laugh hysterically.

\------------

By the time Matt made it back to the lodge, the place was deserted. He'd practically had to bust down the door to get in.

"Guys?" he called. "Sam? Chris? Ash? Anyone?"

Something shuffled behind him. Matt turned. Nothing was there. Long, strange shadows stretched across the foyer. It was hard for him to believe they'd all been sitting there a few hours ago, stoking the fire and getting into pointless, petty arguments.

Of course, had he simply refused to let Emily go for her bag, they could've gotten her help right when she's started acting out of it. She wouldn't have been out in the open for that madman to snatch.

Matt fought the mental image of his girlfriend, drugged and bound in some freezing corner of the sanatorium while the strange man stood over her, taking a moment to admire her helplessness before doing something terrible to her.

But maybe someone had found her, saved her. Hell, maybe she'd stumbled right into Mike and Jess and they'd brought her back to the lodge, Jess probably griping about her ruined sexcapade under her breath.

The though of Mike carrying Emily to the lodge in his arms filled Matt with a different kind of anger. A quieter, more noxious flame, filling his heart with poisonous fumes. Mike just took whatever he wanted, didn't he?

_Wow. Never took you for a hothead, Matt._

A horribly familiar voice echoed in his head.

"J-Josh? You there...?"

_So much anger in that beating heart of yours. Good thing you're not a fan of slashers, dude. I'd be scared you'd get ideas._

"Josh, what the hell?" Matt asked, scanning the lodge for any sign of him. "This is serious, dude. Something's really fucking wrong. I think Em is— H-hey, where are you?"

_Hey now. No spoilers for late arrivals. Why don't you let the girlies upstairs give you the big reveal?_

"Josh, what are you—dude, come on, we have to do something! Someone is fucking with us and Em is gone and—"

"MATT!"

Matt looked up, panic swelling in his chest.

"Sam?"

Josh laughed from whatever shadowy place in which he hid.

_This just keeps getting better! A phantasmagorical spectacle for all the little boys and girls! Better hurry now, big guy. Sounds like Sammy might need some help up there._

Matt's throat went dry.

"Josh...what did you do...?"

Only laughter _,_ highand cold _,_ responded _._

"Matt, is that you?! Help me!" Sam called from upstairs. Heeding her call this time, Matt followed the sound of her voice.

Josh's laughter followed him like a vulture trailing a dying wildebeest.

\------------

Emily made her way to a small, rocky wall, almost mirroring the sort Sam had once somehow cajoled her into climbing with her. Not that it had really helped with her fear of heights. "Exposure therapy," her ass.

Emily climbed gracelessly but efficiently up the rocks, thanking fortune and an adolescence spent in part by going to the gym religiously. She hoisted herself to the top and took a minute to gather herself before pressing on. Thankfully, miraculously, she somehow found the platform again, and the switchboard that actually fucking worked for reasons she was far too pleased to question. Her torch was waiting for her, still lit, because someone up there liked her after all.

But then of course the elevator only turned out to be able to go up a few feet before it sound to a halt, so it turned out that someone up there not only hated her, but was a colossal manipulative bitch as well.

Down the next tunnel shone a pale light, and like a boatful of starving sailors to the siren call of a lighthouse, she wandered in its direction.

The sheer, icy face of the wall was too slick to climb, but as far as she could tell, the shaft led straight up to the mountain's surface. She heard a rustle of paper. A photograph of a familiar, smiling girl, showing off a fresh butterfly tattoo.

Hannah and Beth had fallen down here.

Emily ran a hand through her hair again and bit her lip. She couldn't smell rot, but she couldn't really smell anything but smoke and blood (hers, probably) and the dry, bitter, metallic smell of winter. She walked aimlessly, not wanting to leave the column of moonlight, when her foot came down on a cobbled-together cross made from planks. It looked like a makeshift grave marker.

Well, of course it did. She was in a half-ruined mine. Loads of people had probably died down here.

But she couldn't stop her hands from raising the cross high enough for her to see the name inscribed on the wood.

**BETH**

The cross fell from her trembling hands. Emily's mouth worked madly and senselessly, muttering half-formed syllables and senseless cries of horror and denial. Tears pressed the backs of her eyes and watery blood dripped from one nostril. She prayed to gods she did not know for this nightmare to evaporate and for her to awaken at the lodge or her home or even in a psych ward somewhere.

_She's too loud. Somebody shut her up._

Something cold rested on the back of her neck. Startled, Emily jolted up and whipped around. No one was there. Something laughed at her.

Emily opened her mouth to call out to the person when she felt something tight and icy crush around her throat.

She let out a choked gasp and dropped to the icy floor, her hands flailing as she tried to fight the  _nothing_ that was strangling her.

The pressure increased. Emily's head throbbed. A fuzzy, purple-blue darkness was eating away at the corners of her vision.

Distantly, she heard a faint, echoing voice uttering something strange, his voice droning and chant-like. Emily's eyes fluttered closed.

The pressure on her neck ceased as suddenly as it had come. Emily gulped in a draught of freezing air, coughing and retching on the ground.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a strange man, hidden in heavy coats adorned with strange symbols, approaching the place where she lay.

\------------

The miners had gotten to her first. Had used her as their plaything until they'd grown bored of her and now they were just going to throw her away like a broken toy.

Jessica was small and weak compared to them, but she still had to keep herself from hunting them down.

There was no grace to their work, no compassion, no pressing their victims to repent and earn forgiveness. They just wanted to slaughter Emily and drink her life.

Jessica would be kinder, she resolved. She would punish her friend as her sins warranted of course, and forgiveness for the fight would not come easily, but once her work was done they'd have time to work things out.

They could be better. Hannah had promised.

She thought back to the early days of her friendship with Em, of sloppily painted nails and days at the beach and three-hour phone conversations as the moon traversed the sky and the world fell asleep.

The could be that way again, if only the barrier of Emily's flesh and bones could be cast aside.

The strange man approached Em and she got to her feet and fled.

Jessica followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Definitely not my best work. I apologize. School stress has made my writing quality quite poor.  
> Anyway, hope you liked it this far.  
> The next chapter of "Lycaon" and the final chapter of "The Widows" are on deck.  
> Please leave a comment if you liked it!  
> Thanks for reading!


	9. Loneliness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Endurance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that there are some depictions of abuse in this chapter.

The harsh red light of a freshly-ignited flare cut through the static in her head. She couldn't remember how she'd gotten hold of the flare in the first place, or where she was now. The strange, indescribable interference was making it hard to think. Memories came slowly, and murkily.

The stench of rotten flesh.

An old man covered in strange insignias and talismans.

Booming, echoing voices, some real, some in the strange gray world between true and imagined sounds.

Flashing lights. Yelling. The crunch of rock and gravel under her boots.

Something was coming for her. Something she couldn't even see. She needed to run, and fast. Her legs moved without her commanding them. Her entire body seemed to have come into its own and was now leading her mind along. Not that she minded. As she ran and the rotten bowels of the mines blurred in her vision she thought—briefly, traitorously—that she might actually have lost it. That would mean a dull and lonely psych ward with stiff beds and tired-eyed doctors who looked in your eyes a bit too long.

_("These moments of irrational fear you've been having are called panic attacks, Emily. Many, many people have them. Even someone as sharp and put-together as yourself."_

_"Don't say that."_

_"Don't say what?"_

_"That I'm sharp. That's all anyone says. 'Oh, Emily, you're so smart, you'll go so far.' What am I supposed to say to that? Everyone wants me to be so perfect all the time. What if I mess up? What if I'm not good enough for everyone? What then?"_

_"Do you feel pressured to succeed, Emily?"_

_"...Yeah."_

_"Can you tell me more about that?")_

She shook her head to clear it and kept moving. The light of the flare bathed everything in a bright, unnatural shade of red. Like the blood of some twisted, impossible animal. She moved through the tunnels without any real clue where she was going. There had to be an elevator to the surface nearby, but every time she tried to parse out where it could be, her brain flooded with static again. The cold, mocking voices of long-dead men cut in and out. They wanted her to die down here, to starve, freeze, waste away.

Like Hannah?

Her hands were cold and bleeding. The varnish was chipping off her nails. It was like the paint coming off of a doll. Emily took in a breath of stale air and kept walking. Her entire lower body ached. It was a miracle that her hip hadn't been jerked out of the socket during the fall down the shaft.

She found a gap in the rock and squeezed through. The shafts echoed with the distant chants of the strange old man. Emily shivered. Something else was close, not just the man and the unknown forces corrupting her mind. This thing, whatever it was, felt familiar. Like the touch of a breeze from a childhood summer.

Emily moved a little faster.

The shafts widened a little. Emily thought she could see light shining in distantly from far above. She let her body take the lead, no longer trusting her mind and the things that had taken up residence there.

_C'mon now boys, are you really gonna let a perfectly good meal crawl back into the light like that?_

_Tryin'. That bastard priest must've done something._

_Damn. So many unspent years on that one too._

_Would've liked to see her writhe as the life bled out._

_Would've liked to see her lights go out—_

"Shut up!" Emily screamed, "Shut up shut up SHUT UP!"

Laughter echoed through the mines. Emily broke into a wild run, no longer caring where she was going so long as it was away from  _them._ She barreled down the passages, leaping over gaps and bursting through barriers, the splinters catching in her hair and on her skin. She came upon a fork in the path and turned left on instinct before she even allowed herself time to read the signpost. Her breath exploded from her lungs. She could taste the distant hint of cold winter air up above. She was inches from the elevator when a soft, familiar voice made her stop cold.

_Wait up, Em._

No.

No no no.

Emily took a few steps forward. Jessica's voice cut in again, a little more firm.

_Emily. Stop running. I don't want to have to hurt you._

"This isn't happening. This can't be happening. What the hell is going on...?"

There were tears starting in her eyes. Her feet would not move where she commanded them. She stayed rooted to the spot while the voice of her (dead?) best friend  whispered in the back of her head.

_There's a lot going on in your head, Em. Lots of anger and loneliness and guilt. You were always at your bitchiest when you were hurting the most. We can help you. We can fix you. Just let us._

"Stop this," Emily pleaded, tears threatening to fall, "Please just stop."

_I'm trying to do this nicely, Em._

Finally the muscles in her leg caught up with the rest of her. She made a mad dash for the elevator, ducking inside and reaching for the lever without a second thought. Her grip tightened around the handle when a loud angry sound blared in her ears. It sounded like a fire alarm tone, but higher pitched and somehow crueler. More personal. Her hand wend numb on the handle as an icy sensation spread through her body, freezing her in place. There was a sensation like ice-cold fingers on her face.

_You want to be a bitch about this? Fine._

The invisible fingers jabbed into her eyes.

Emily didn't even have time to scream before she blacked out.

\------------

_She's four years old. Her dad's off on a big, important business trip to Paris, and he said he'd bring her back something pretty for her birthday. She's playing in the living room when her mom comes in, her eyes clouded and heavy, the wireless phone from the kitchen hanging loosely in her hand. Emily's never seen somebody look so sad before._

_"Mommy? What's wrong?"_

_"The...the plane...it...oh, sweetheart...I...I..."_

_She finishes telling her eventually. Emily wishes she hadn't._

\-------------

_She's five years old. Her mom is talking to her new stepdad (she didn't know there were stepfathers; just wicked stepmothers and ugly stepsisters), who showers her in loving compliments and gifts and money every chance he gets. Her mom invites her closer. Her stepfather smiles with all his too-white teeth and gives her a present: a shiny doll that walks and talks. Emily names her Lucy._

_Three days later Emily's up late. She had a bad dream and wants to tell her mom. But when she opens the door to her parent's room she finds her stepdad holding a strange woman close to him, whispering in her ear. Her mother's gone; working late, probably. Her stepdad looks up at her approach and tells her to leave. Emily doesn't move. Her stepdad walks over to her, grabs her by the hair, and, ignoring the strange woman's protests, throws her out of the room, slamming the door behind her._

_Emily sniffles and goes back to her room. Lucy's smile is mocking in the darkness._

_Emily rams her doll against the wall until it breaks._

_\------------_

_She's seven years old. Her new private school is 93% white. Her mom tells her to make her proud. Tells her she's smart, and that she'll be alright in this scary new place where the uniforms are crisp and navy blue and the teachers give every student the same expectant glare. One of the girls in her class told her friends that Asians eat fish guts for lunch. They pass by Emily's nearly-empty table every day, making exaggerated sniffing noises and letting out a chorus of "eww" as they move past her._

_Emily learns to eat lunch in the stairwell._ _She learns how to succeed, to be the best student, have the best_   _things, so she can make herself better than the other kids. She learns how to be the best, and soon, that's what everyone expects from her._

_\------------_

_She's thirteen years old. She's three hours into the first day of seventh grade and she's already unpopular. The transition from private to public school was rocky enough, and now she's swimming in a pool of adolescent sharks, all lightyears cooler and better dressed than her. The kids in the halls are indifferent as she squeezes past them on her way to social studies. One lanky, bespectacled boy smiles at her in the hallway as he walks alongside that jovial Hollywood kid that everyone already adores. It's the only kind look she's gotten all day._

_She sits in the front like always. The bell rings and she dutifully gets out her textbook. Her teacher goes briefly over the syllabus, then begins his lecture on the Fertile Crescent, the birthplace of civilization. Twenty minutes into class a girl strolls into the classroom, playing with her phone and smiling to herself. Her hair is a light, soft brown, and for a split second Emily has the absurd urge to touch it._

_"Excuse me," her teacher says, undisguised annoyance in his voice. He probably had wild ambitions when he was younger, way better than being stuck as a junior high social studies teacher. "May I help you, miss? You're disrupting class."_

_"Is this seventh grade world history or whatever?" the girl asks, looking up from her phone._

_"Yes," the teacher sighs. He looks over at his class roster. "Are you Jessica Pratt, or whatever?" he asks, his voice dipping sarcastically._

_"Uh huh."_

_"You're very late, Miss Pratt. Please sit down."_

_Jessica saunters over to the only empty desk, right beside Emily. The teacher starts again and Emily begins to furiously jot down notes. Then—_

_"Miss Pratt."_

_"Hm?"_

_"Where is your textbook? You should've picked one up during registration."_

_"Oh. I forgot it."_

_A vein in the teacher's temple pulses. A few kids stifle laughs. Emily's never seen such blatant disregard of authority in her life._

_"Miss Tanaka-Clarke," the teacher says through gritted teeth, "would you mind sharing your textbook with Miss Pratt so she doesn't miss any more valuable class time?"_

_Emily agrees without question. She moves her desk over so its side touches the side of Jessica's desk. She slides the book between them. Jessica flashes a smile at her. Emily's heart rate picks up a little._

_\-------------_

_She's fifteen years old. It's the first time she's failed at something since she was a child. The red sharpie "35%" stares up at her from the assignment she'd been stupid enough to forget about until the night before it was due. A message under the grade ("This isn't like you, Emily. Come see me?") almost makes it worse. Emily's trying to hold it together but her heart is hammering in her chest and her fingers and toes are going numb and there are tears in her eyes and she's dying, dying, dying._

_Three hours later she's in the hospital and a psychologist is talking to her mother in a hushed voice, talking about stress and anxiety and disorders._

_She's crazy. She's defective. She's broken._

_She spends two days in the psych ward and leaves with an orange bottle of benzodiazepines._

_Crazy Emily Tanaka-Clarke. The kids at school will have a field day._

_\------------_

_She's eighteen years old. She's paranoid, jealous, cruel. A friend of hers has crush on her boyfriend. Emily helps to organize a prank to scare her off. Two people die because of it._

_\------------_

  _She's nineteen years old. She climbed through Matt's bedroom window and now she's seducing him, doing an uncoordinated strip tease in his own damn bed. There's mascara tracks on her face and whiskey on her breath. Matt's just staring. It's been twenty-four hours since she was dumped._

_He's in love with her. Or in love with some idea of her that he's got in his head. In love with the Emily that's strong and smart and the envy of the adolescent world. He loves the false her, would burn the world for the false her. So the false her is what he gets. He gets a pretty girl to pamper and impress and she gets a temporary fix for the emptiness inside her. Fair trade._

_Matt kisses her. Says "I love you" and probably believes he means it._

_Emily does her best to not think about what he'd say if he saw the real her._

_\------------_

_She's still nineteen, and drunk again. Mike's on top of her, nibbling at her collar bone, thrusting inside her like a nail into a board. Emily shudders and swallows back a sob. She will not cry in front of Mike Munroe._

_"You're so good, Em," he purrs, "Just stay there, yeah? Good. Good. God, Em, you're so damn_ _hot_ _."_

_The lies fill her up and she briefly forgets about Matt, about her betrayal. Mike makes her feel so important, so valuable, so lovable. The praise gets her off way more than the actual sex, which mostly just hurts._

_Mike comes. Emily gets close enough that she decides it counts._

_Mike slides out of her, throws out the condom, gets his clothes back on, and leaves. Emily throws up._

_\------------_

_She's still nineteen. She's ugly and worthless and everyone has left her. She's on her back in a rusted elevator in a mine that will probably become her tomb._

_"It's not your fault", someone whispers. "You were always so lonely. It made you mean."_

_She's crying now. There are cold hands on her neck again, but this time they're hers._

_"I still love you. Let me fix you. Let's be friends again."_

_Her hands digging into her own throat is her answer._

_Her body is the problem. Her flesh, her bones, her weight, her sins. Jessica can cure her, can save her wretched soul._

_Suddenly everything is loud and people are screaming and she wants to run and hide but she can't move. She digs her nails deeper in so blood starts to flow but it's not enough, she's not enough. The chanting reverberates within her and she's falling into darkness and she can't find JessJessJessJess—_

_She blacks out again._

_\------------_

Matt hurried up the stairs of the lodge, following Sam's cries. He turned a few hard corners until he was at the door to Hannah's room. He threw it open to find Ashley pinning Sam to the floor with absurd strength, whispering something in her ear. Sam turned her head and saw him standing there.

"Matt!"

Matt ran in without thinking, throwing all his weight into Ash and shoving her off. Ash got back up immediately and fixed him with a smirk.

"Always have to be the good guy, don't you, Matt," she said, "Though I can't say the things you did a year ago were all that good. Did little lover boy forget his morals?"

"What the hell...what the  _fuck_ is going on?!"

Ashley sighed.

"Josh?" she called, "Can you take care of this one?"

Matt felt an icy wind hit him hard in the back before wrapping around his body and winding into his mouth, down his throat. Matt's chest tightened and his head grew white hot as holes bored into his vision. The sensation burned within him for a few seconds before it abruptly subsided. Matt fell to his knees.

 _Fuck,_ Josh's voice hissed,  _I can't take him over. Does this, like, happen? Is he the chosen one or some shit?_

"No, you just suck."

_Gee, thanks, sis._

"What?"

Matt gaped at Ash. Sam had gotten to her feet and was inching closer to him.

_So should I try to get Sam, then, or—_

"No," Ashley said, her voice sharp, "I want time with her. Alone. While I have a body."

_Yeah. Got it. I'll clear him out._

A sharp noise filled Matt's head. If a sound had a color, this would be the pure white brightness of the sun. The lyrics to that song started up again, but this time they were warped, looping over and over and stopping in strange places.

Other sounds filled his head too.

The snarling of a wild dog.

Wet ripping sounds. A child crying out.

The harsh cry of the winter wind and the screams of two girls buried in it.

The song degenerated into a long scream. The scream's owner kept changing, the pitch and timbre warping to match the ever-changing voice.

Hannah. Beth. Emily. Jess. Sam. Ash. Mike. Chris. Josh. Himself.

The scream was breathless, agonized. The worst, most painful sound he'd ever heard.

It looped again. Matt dropped to his knees and let his own screams join the one in his head.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sam rush at Ashley. Ash blocked her effortlessly and flung her onto Hannah's bed. Sam's head hit the headboard and she collapsed onto her back with a groan.

"Hush, hon," Ashley cooed, "I'll be with you in a minute."

She paced over to the corner of the room and picked something up. The screaming in Matt's head didn't stop.

Ash walked back over to him, her face blank, her eyes flat as rotten leaves. She took the tennis racket she'd found in the corner of Hannah's room and stopped it, leaving a curl of tungsten framing with polymer strings hanging from it and a sharp, uneven point at the end. She held it over Matt's throat.

"Hold still."

The scream reached a crescendo, drowning out all other sound. Ashley raised the racket.

Then everything blurred and whirled—and stopped.

\------------

Beth cursed. Her angry words turned to the howl of the wind. She felt Josh and Hannah move beside her.

_What was that?_

_The old man,_ Beth growled,  _The priest or whatever he is. He set up a barrier around the lodge._

_Damn. Didn't realize this ghost shit was so complicated._

_We need them!_ Hannah snapped.  _We only have until dawn before they leave us._

The priest moved below her. Beth seethed into the snow, the wind, the air. Then she felt something. Another spirit, trapped. Buried.

 _Jessica,_ she said, _Jessica is still within Em._

 _So?_ Josh asked.

Beth couldn't smile, not exactly, but she felt the currents of air around her shift and curl with happiness.

_So she's our way in._

\------------

Matt was still in Hannah's room when he came to. Sam was still flopped on the bed, Ashley curled up on the floor, the racket lying by her head. Slowly the girls came to and sat up. Sam rubbed the back of her head and groaned. Ashley shuddered. Matt looked at her face. There was a little more color in her cheeks, and the light had returned to her eyes.

"Ash," he said slowly, "Are you...you?"

"I..think so...?" Ashley said. She blinked. "What happened?"

"Something's just making everyone go nuts," Sam said, "Gas leak or something."

Ashley lowered her head and began to cry.

"Ash?"

"Matt..." Sam said. Her voice was strained, her expression clouded.

"What? What is it? What happened?"

Sam looked down at the floor.

"Josh is dead."

Matt's brain short-circuited. He stared at Sam, uncomprehending.

_Josh is dead. Dead. Another friend. Another Washington. Dead._

"H-how...?"

"I...I d-didn't mean to I just—he was attacking me and there were saws and a mask and I—I—" Ashley sobbed. Matt gaped at her.

"You...?"

"I'm sorry," Ashley whimpered.

"It wasn't her fault," Sam said, "Josh was trying to pull some kind of—I don't know—fucking elaborate prank to get back at us? Ash didn't know, she though she was really in danger and just...reacted."

Matt's throat went dry. He swallowed and tried desperately to wrap his mind around it.

"I don't...why—"

"Oh, I don't know," Sam snapped, "Maybe he thought it would be funny to terrorize and humiliate his own friends. Wild, huh? Who would ever do that?"

Silence fell. Matt thought of Hannah, of the betrayal on her face the last time he'd seen her alive.

Sam sighed.

"I'm sorry. I'm just stressed."

"It's fine," Matt said, "We all are."

"How did you get here?" Sam asked him, "Where's Emily?"

Before he could answer, he heard a pounding coming from somewhere downstairs.

"Is someone—?"

"Who the hell could it be?" Sam hissed.

"Mike and Jess?" Matt suggested. "Or—"

He thought back to the man in the sanatorium.

"I'll check it out. You guys stay here. Okay?"

"No way. If it's someone weird you're gonna need backup," Sam said.

"What, no!" Matt said, "You stay here with Ash. It's too dangerous for a—"

Sam raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, never mind. Let's go, Sam."

They walked back into the foyer. Beyond the door stood a large figure, shadowed by the night and the storm. Matt squinted and recognized the figure of the man with the wolves. He was carrying something on his back.

The man knocked again. Matt trembled.

"Sam," he hissed, "What do we do? I seriously doubt he's gonna leave."

"I'm gonna open the door," Sam replied, "When I do, I want you to tackle him. Okay?"

"Mm."

Sam slipped past him and put her hand on the knob. Matt moved into position.

Sam yanked the door open and the man moved inside. Matt prepared to charge but halted as soon as he saw the person balanced on his shoulders.

"Emily," he breathed. He got in front of the old man and brought himself to his full height. "What did you do to her?" he growled. The old man did not flinch.

"Listen, son," the man told him, "You want to help your friend here, you can help me lay her down somewhere safe." He thrust Emily into his arms. She was unconscious, pale, and covered in cuts and bruises.

"What happened to her?" Sam asked.

"All in good time, kid," the man said. He moved past them into the living room. Matt followed, carrying his girlfriend as gently as he could. He lay her down on the couch and stared at her. There were angry red scratches all over her neck, patches of gauze haphazardly applied where the wounds went deepest. Matt swallowed a sob.

"Em..."

Emily stirred but did not wake. Matt heard something shuffling behind him and saw Ashley approaching, curious, out of the corner of his eye.

"It was a mistake for you to come back here," the man said, "This mountain belongs to the dead."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Matt said.

The old man gave him a stern look.

"You and your friends been hearing strange things? Voices of people who aren't there? Having moments where there are blanks in your mind? Friends acting strange and technology going out of whack?"

"Yeah, but we've been, I guess, hallucinating, or something," Sam mumbled, "Gas leak."

"This ain't the work of no gas leak, darling," the old man chuckled, "How about I prove that to ya?"

He walked over to Emily. Matt bristled.

"Get away from her—"

"Easy, son, this won't hurt her," the man told him, dipping his right hand in a pouch containing a strange powder, "It'll just let you talk to another one of your friends." He sprinkled the powder directly over Emily's heart and muttered something in an unfamiliar language. His voice was deep and calm, like a slow-moving river deep underground.

Emily's eyes snapped open. They were flat and cold like Ashley's had been.

"Emily?" Matt asked.

Emily looked at him, obviously confused.

"Oh," she said after a moment, "I guess I'm stuck."

"You are bound to this body and bound to the truth. Speak in your true voice," the old man commanded.

"I—" Emily started, then paused. Then, in what was undoubtedly Jessica's voice, said, "Hm, that feels weird."

"Tell us your name, spirit."

"Jessica Pratt."

"How long have you been dead?"

"About four hours now."

Ashley let out a little moan.

"Why have you possessed your friend?"

"Well, I was supposed to get this over with quickly—just have her bite her own tongue off or something—but she was being a bitch and wasn't letting me in. So I let myself in."

"You assaulted her mind until she gave in."

"What was I supposed to do? You can't take somebody over if they're aware of your presence and won't let you in."

"Why do you want her dead?"

"Hannah told me to do it."

"Hannah...?" Sam mumbled. Her voice trembled.

"Why does Hannah want her dead, then?" the old man asked.

"So she'll be with us."

"With you?"

Emily's body sighed.

"We want everyone together. Forever. We can be with each other and fix each other and everything."

"What do you intend to do?"

"We're going to kill all of you," Jessica's voice said matter-of-factly. Matt felt his heart fall into his stomach.

"Thank you, spirit," the old man said. He began chanting something and moved his hand to another pouch.

Before he could move any further, a sudden flash of blinding white light shone out of every orifice of Emily's face. She let out a terrible, inhuman scream and jerked to her feet. She staggered toward the old man and rammed into him, throwing him to the ground. The others tried to move but  _something_ kept them rooted to the floor. Emily's hands wrapped around the old man's throat, pressing down harder and harder until something cracked.

The man jerked, then lay still. Emily stood back up and faced them, light still pouring from her eyes. She was breathing heavily, her body straining and failing as it tried to sustain whatever was happening to it.

"Let her go!" Matt screamed, "Whatever you are, just—please, let her go!"

The light faded from Emily's body and she crumpled to the ground, her eyes open and unseeing. Above her prone body Matt could just barely make out three figures hanging in the air. After a moment, a fourth appeared, trembling and flickering. One of the figures brought it close and seemed to cradle it, whispering something soothing to it.

The central figure spoke in a voice he immediately knew to belong to Beth.

_Kill them._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy hell, that got long.  
> And then there were four. Let's hope they can find some way to avoid becoming ghost bait.  
> If I'm being honest, I'm wondering if I should try to complete this or if there are few enough readers that I should just let this go. Let me know what y'all think, yeah?  
> New chapter of "Lycaon" and epilogue to "Growing Pains" are on deck.  
> Thanks for reading!


	10. Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Awakening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAND WE'RE BACK, LADIES AND GENTS (and everybody in between)!
> 
> When we last left our heroes:  
> Death, dying, confusion, ghostly shit.

They ran, feeling cold hands brush against the back of their necks, otherworldly cries reverberate through their bones, their guts, their souls. The ghosts were lonely, and angry, and hungry.

They ran. 

Down the stairs and into the basement, feet thundering, hearts pounding, breath exploding from their lungs. Ashley nearly fell down the stairs, Sam barely catching her before she utterly lost her footing. They burst into one of the lower rooms and were about to slam the door behind them (for all the good that would do against fucking ghosts) when it hit them that Matt wasn't there.

"Where the hell is he...?" Sam asked, half to herself. Ashley paced and whimpered.

Finally, they saw him stumble down the stairs, Emily's body slung over his shoulder and Sam felt her heart lurch. She wasn't able to save her. Not Emily or Jess or Josh or Hannah or Beth or anyone. Matt staggered past them, Ashley slamming the door behind him. Sam swallowed hard.

"Matt—"

"Guys, help me with her, will you? I need to wake her up—"

"Matt. Please. You have to—"

"No! No, I—I left her. I failed her," Matt yelled at them, his voice strained, his eyes starting to water. "I have to take care of her."

"Matt, she's..." Sam swallowed again. "She's gone. They all controlled her at once, and—I, I think her heart gave out."

Matt shook his head.

"No. No."

"Matt..." Ashley tried, but cut herself off, looking away.

"No, no she can't be..." Matt's knees buckled. He knelt there, on the floor, cradling Emily's body while her eyes stared glassily at the ceiling.

"Matt, I'm sorry," Sam sighed. "I saw her there, with the other ghosts."

"Fuck...fuck, no, she didn't deserve that. She doesn't deserve to, to be stuck on some goddamn mountain forever! Stuck with the people who fucking killed her...!" Matt shook with sobs as he pet Emily's hair. Ashley let out a tiny whimper from the corner of the room.

"Matt, we can still help her," Sam pleaded. "We can help all of them. If we can just talk to them, maybe we can help them—help them move on."

_I might suggest you brats give up on them and leave this mountain while your hearts are still beatin'._

All three of them jump, Matt covering Emily's body protectively. Sam let out a tiny gasp. The slouched silhouette of the dead old man flickered in the half-light. He sighed wearily, the sound a hiss of rust and steam.

 _You might think that you can somehow help your friends move on to the afterlife,_ the old man told them,  _but that ain't how that works. This mountain ain't just a home for the dead. It's a prison._

Ashley shifted closer to Sam, looking close to tears. Sam found herself praying that this was some trick. That this whole night was an illusion, a bad dream. Something she'd wake up from and find a mustache drawn in sharpie on her face, Josh and Jess laughing at her while the others chide them, shoving their shoulders and Hannah's voice saying "guys, cut it out."

 _Any man or woman who perishes upon this mountain,_ the man continued,  _is doomed to spend eternity wandering the slopes, a lost, hungry spirit with no hope of ever knowing the bliss of Paradise._

"So, so there's nothing we can do?" Sam asked, feeling her hands begin to quake. "Our friends are just fucking stuck here forever and we have to just accept that?"

Ashley shook her head.

"No, no that's not...there has to be something we can do, right? Like a ritual or something to break the curse?"

 _Stupid girl, that's what I was trying to do ever since I got to this damned mountain,_ the old man growled.  _And look what good it did anyone._

There was a pause. Sam could hear the spirits whispering, their voices high and cold in the back of their mind. They were close, and whatever the old man's spirit was doing to offer protection was fading fast.

"Guys," Sam muttered to the others, "maybe we should go."

"What if we trapped them?" Ashley asked suddenly. Everyone stared at her. Ashley blushed. "I mean, like, trap the ghosts in something, like a...a phylactery. You, know, in fairy tales and stuff that's where they'd keep souls? And then, like take them off the mountain and figure out how to save them there."

 _You want to construct a phylactery._ The man sounds annoyed, but slightly intrigued. Sam turned to look at Ashley, whose eyes were still red-rimmed, but now filled with a kind of determination Sam had yet to see in her.

"Could we do that?"

Another sigh, another hiss of steam.

_It might be possible, but astronomically risky. You would need to entrap the spirits in something of great value to them, but the ritual would require the last of my supplies, as well as a medium. The boy is the only one who could do that, and his pretty little friend will probably be waiting for him to open up so she can kill 'em._

Matt's expresión didn't change.

 _By the time you had all that set up,_  the old man finished, _you'll likely all be dead already. The spirits of this mountain are uninterested in your help. They only want to kill you._

Sam felt something inside of her turn from glass to steel.

"Well, they've been stubborn before," Sam said. "But, fuck it, I'm helping them whether they like it or not." She looked to the others. "As long as we're together in this."

Ashley nodded, looking frightened but determined. Matt looked down at Emily's body, then up at them. He cleared his throat.

"Yeah. I'm in."

 _You kids are even more idiotic than I thought,_ the old man grumbled.

A shudder passed through all of them, something in reality snapping like a weak thread. Sam felt a shiver run down her spine and she knew they were coming for them.

 _There's a tunnel hidden under a grate in the eastern hallway!_ The old man barked.  _It leads to the sanatorium! Go! Go!_

Sam snatched Ashley's hand and bolted for the door, Matt reluctantly laying Emily down and brushing a hand over her eyes to close them. Sam watched as he tore after the others just as a blinding able-white light erupted behind him, the spirits furiously engulfing the old man, trying to cast him aside and close in on their prey. Sam ran, her breath ripping through her windpipe like acidic fog. She nearly missed the entrance to the tunnels if not for Ashley tugging her arm until she skidded to a halt.

It was a heavy wheel of metal, not unlike a manhole cover and it took all three of them to move it aside. Before them lay a blackness as dark as moist black velvet.

Sam coughed.

"Who's going first?"

\------------

Jessica drifted into the tunnels. Her body lay in a place like this one. Mike was there too. Afraid, alone, in pain.

But he'd be with them again soon.

Hannah had told them to take care of the others. She would deal with Mike. If they were alive she would've never let Hannah just waltz off with her man and get away with it, but. Well.

Penance was a bitch.

That bastard priest just wouldn't fucking leave them alone, always had to get in their way like any of this was his business. They'd left him, battered and cursing, in some shadowy corner but he'd be back.

Damn shame they couldn't kill him again.

Emily shuddered quietly beside her. The assault on her mind and the overwhelming of her body with spirits had made her weak.

 _Sorry,_ she whimpered, over and over,  _I'm sorry._

Poor creature. Not so tough, stripped down to her vulnerable core. Jess brought her closer to her. She could feel Emily's unspent years singing inside her. Making her stronger. There was a part of Jess that was still reeling from Emily's poison-tipped words but it's hard to hate someone when they're so weak, so vulnerable, so _tiny_. Everything they'd fought over while trapped in cages of bones and flesh felt so trivial now.

Emily made a quiet sound, a kind of soft sobbing. Jess hadn't seen her like this since junior high, when a boy pretended to ask her out only to have the whole class laugh in her face.

 _Oh, hon,_ Jess crooned.  _Shh. It's okay._

_I want to go home..._

_This is our home now. We'll be together forever,_ Jess whispered to her.  _We'll never grow old. We'll be young and hot for fucking eternity. And o_ _nce we get some of the others' years in you? You're gonna be so strong. No one's gonna fuck with us._

She felt Emily quiver, a tiny fire of rage lighting itself inside her. Fear and sadness smelted by that fire into anger, just like before.

_I won't be weak._

_That's more like it,_ Jess whispered back, swelling with pride as Emily's old rage comes surging back.

_Those fuckers shouldn't get to live when I died. That's not fair._

_Wanna bring 'em over?_ Jess asked.

 _Let's kill them,_ Emily growled, her voice trembling.  _Let's fucking kill them all._

\------------

Ashley was sure the others had been right in front of her. They'd just been there, Matt and Sam, silent, their hesitant, stumbling footsteps on the loose, slimy rock the only sounds. Ashley didn't know when she must've gotten lost in her thoughts, swimming in memories of blood and death and the lifeless, staring eyes of Josh as the liquid evidence of her sin pooled around his body and no amount of 'sorry' would make her red hands white again.

But Matt and Sam were gone. They were nowhere in the tunnels, or too far away, and no matter how loudly she called for them they didn't seem to hear her. Ashley felt her knees begin to shake. No. No no no, she couldn't do this alone. Not alone. Alone in the dark under a house full of corpses. Friends she had killed. Whose ghosts were as furious as they were ravenous.

"Hello! Anybody? Sam! Matt!"

"Ash?"

Ashley felt her heart slam into her gut.

"Chris...?"

She'd thought that he must've died when he was up with Emily getting help, but no one had found a body. Ashley felt her pulse pick up a bit.

"Chris! Chris, I'm here, I'm in the tunnels! Are you close?"

"I'm—I think I'm stuck. Ash, please, can you help me?"

Finally she could do some good tonight. After fucking up and losing people over and over and fucking over, she could finally save someone.

"Of course, yeah!" She called, feeling suddenly elated. "Yeah! Just let me—let me get over to you. Just shout if you can hear me!"

"I'm here, I'm here! Just, uh—f-fuck, just follow my voice—ahh shit, ow."

Ashley began to walk in the direction of his cries, flashlight trembling in her sweating hands.

"Chris, are you hurt? Do you need—"

"I'm okay, I just—my leg's stuck in this...this fucking—thing, I don't know what it is. Are you close?"

"Yeah, I can hear you better! I'm close!"

"Okay...okay..."

Ashley fumbled in the dark, lowering herself down a drop and following the echoes of Chris's voice. Like the sailors following sirens, a voice in her head said.

Chris cried out again, loud and clear. She was close.

She came upon an opening in the tunnels, a space a little wider than the caverns before. A rusty, useless trapdoor on the ground before her. Ashley swallowed.

"Chris? A-are you in there?"

"I think so?" Chris's muffled voice comes from under the door. "I'm stuck, I can't move the door. Can you help me?"

Ashley fumbled with the latch. It was rusted and heavy, and she had to practically snap it off in order to unlock the door.

"Hey, Ash..." Chris's voice, suddenly quieter, said as she worked. "Can...can I ask you something?"

"Uh, sure?"

"Do you—ugh, fuck. Do you...like me?"

"Of course!" Ashley said as she tore the latch away. "You're my friend."

"No, I mean...like—" Chris suddenly cut off. Ashley felt her face get hot.

Oh.

"Oh."

"It's cool if you don't—"

"N-no, Chris, I do! I like you a lot." Ashley felt her throat clog up. "I have for a while."

"R-really?"

"Yeah," Ashley said, her vision fogging up as she begins to lift the door. "I wanted to tell you, I did, I just—I was scared. I kept talking around it..."

"I...wow...I really like you too, Ash."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Ashley lifted up the trapdoor half expecting a passionate embrace. But—

"Chris? Are you there? Chris...?"

There was no one there, no one at all. Just empty, cavernous darkness.

"I'm sorry, Ashley. I should've told you how I felt—"

There's a cold hand tickling the back of her neck. Ashley lurched around and sees a silhouette handing in the faint light, hands reaching for her neck.

— _when I was alive._

\------------

A whirring blackness, a stabbing pain. Fire all over.

God, it hurt.

Mike took in a shuddering, pained breath as he opened his eyes. Darkness and rust and ruin. Beside him lay another body, broken and cold. Mike's trembling, unbroken arm drifted over to it, fingers tracing the ruined face of—

No.

A bad dream. This was all a bad dream because ghosts don't fucking exist and there's no way in hell that Jessica is dead. No. No. No no no.

Tears poured from his eyes before he could stop them and there was no point to acting macho when he was all alone, covered in blood and aching and barely able to move. He lay there, sobbing like a child as his head throbbed and Jess got colder and colder under his hand.

_Poor little boy._

A shadow of a girl appeared over his head. She smiled wide, too wide, the glint of crooked teeth catching in the dim light. Something sticky and red dripped, dripped, dripped down onto his cheek.

"No...please God...no...!"

The shadow leaned in. A rotted face, faded eyes and browning teeth and that same smile, wide and gleeful. Ready to eat him up. A curtain of matted dark hair fell into his face, and suddenly he realized that he knew the face to which those rotted eyes and matted hair belonged.

"Han...nah...?"

_Come here, Mikey._

The dead girl smiled, a mouthful of rotten teeth, and moved in for a kiss.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Bursts from the ground like a zombie*  
> IIIIIIII LIIIIIIIVE!  
> Alright, back on track! Should have this puppy finished by October.  
> Thank you guys so much for sticking with me! You don't know what it means to me that you haven't given up on me.  
> "Lycaon" is on temporary hiatus, but I will be getting back to it soon. Stay tuned!  
> Leave a comment if you liked it! Cheers!


	11. Endgame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: Atonement.

They found her in the tunnels, lying on her back with bruise marks and scratches on her throat. Her chest rose and fell reassuringly as Sam gently shook her shoulder.

"Ashley? Ash, can you hear me?"

Ashley groaned, drawing her lips into a tight white line and squeezing her eyes tight before opening them, the faint light catching in her watery green eyes. She coughed.

"Ngh...Chris..."

Sam felt her veins go tight.

"Chris? D-did you see him?"

Ashley looked at Sam, tears beginning to form in her eyes, the water turning the iris the color of a rain-soaked leaf.

"Oh God...Sam. H-he's dead...He's gone...!"

She curled into a little ball and quaked, tremors touring through her tiny body and Sam swallowed her into a hug as Matt let out a miserable sigh.

"Oh, Ash..."

"H-he was my best friend..."

"Ashley," Sam crooned, running a soothing hand through her hair. "We're gonna get through this, okay? We just gotta hold on. We're gonna make it. Okay?"

Ashley didn't answer, just curled further into Sam's embrace. There was a dripping, a faint echo, that made all three of them jump. Sam looked up at Matt, whose eyes were still dark and heavy with loss. His hands balled into shaking fists.

"Sam, I think they're close. We should go."

They made their way through the tunnels, jumping at every drip of water or shuddering rock. Just beyond the realm of sensation they knew their friends were there, following them, waiting for the perfect moment. Their rage, their hunger, radiated through the air like waves of heat and caused something deep inside of them to shudder and quake. They were running out of time. Sam could feel something, a quiet, toxic sludge moving through her body because she finally got to see Beth again, but the creature she saw was almost a parody of her, nothing but hunger and rage and twisted, warped thoughts. Corrupted by loneliness into something cruel and hateful, that wanted to turn everyone and everything still drawing breath into something like her.

And Sam had let it happen.

Most of her friends were gone by this point. If she survived she was going to have a lot of parents to talk to. She pictured trying to explain to Emily's sobbing mother why her beloved little girl's heart had simply stopped and no one had been able to save her. How Ashley had accidentally killed the third and final Washington. How so many ordinary teenagers had left their parents' watch for a weekend holiday, only to never come home again.

Sam didn't realize she was crying until she felt a strong, warm arm wrap around her shoulders. Matt looked down at her with a shaky smile.

"We're gonna save them," he said, unconvincingly. "We're gonna save them, right Sam?"

Sam nodded dully, feeling a lump form in her throat.

"Y-yeah. Yeah, we are."

They were quiet the rest of the way through the tunnels.

\------------

A teenage girl's bedroom, covered in blood.

Mike looked around the place, bewildered, wondering how the hell he got here. Blood soaked through the carpet and into his shoes, sending shivers through his body. A bit of pulpy red gore dripped down from the creaking ceiling fan. Strewn all over the walls and floating in the puddles of blood on the floor were thousands upon thousands of love letters. With shaking hands, he picked one off the floor and began to read.

_Michael,_

_My heart is rotten and flaking and grey_

_It lurches and leaks black blood for you_

_You stole my breath away_

_And now I'll take yours_

_-H_

The letter fell from his hands and Mike swallowed down a scream. He ran for the door, breath exploding from his lungs. Something caught against his foot and sent him careening onto the floor, blood and gore splattering onto his face. He looked up, spitting bloody bits of human remains out of his mouth, and took a look at what tripped him up.

He screamed.

Lying on the floor was a twitching mass of three girls crushed together into one abomination, heads and arms and lumps of flesh bending and swaying lazily in the stagnant air. He could see in the humanoid lump of parts a pair of achingly familiar brown eyes rolled back, a jawless mouth dripping blood and drool; clumps of hair, black and brown and blonde sprouting from the creature's malformed body like patches of dead grass. Manicured hands grabbed at his legs, the dead eyes of Emily, Jess and Hannah floating in the creature's lumpy flesh and trained on him. The creature spoke in a warped voice, three sobbing girls blended together and croaking out a nursery rhyme.

_"Georgie Porgie pudding and pie_

_Kissed the girls and made them cry."_

"No, no! Get off! Get off me!" Mike screamed.

_"Mike, why did you kill us?"_

"I, I didn't! I didn't want—I didn't mean to!"

 _"Why wasn't I good enough for you, Michael?"_ Emily's voice crooned,  _"Why did you abandon me?"_

"E-Em, it's not like that, I promise," Mike begged. "It's just—"

 _"That you love me?"_ Jessica's voice cut in.  _"If you loved me, why did you cheat on me? Why did you betray me like that? Why don't you love me?"_

"Jess, I made a mistake, but I really do love you, I—"

 _"Why did you lie to them? Why did you lie to me?"_ Hannah's voice interrupted him.  _"Why did you pretend to care for us when you only love yourself?"_

"I love you guys, I love all of you, I promise," Mike sobbed. "I p-promise..."

_"You let us die. You let us rot."_

"No! No!"

_"You let us die. You let us rot."_

"Please...!"

_"You let us die. You let us rot."_

Mike had only a second to scream before their dead hands were upon him, scratching and clawing and ripping off patches of skin and hair. Mike yelped and struggled but the hands held him in place, two pushing him down, three tearing his flesh, one petting his hair as strange voices whispered into his ear.

_"Be mine."_

The hands clawed and cut into his skin, drawing warm wet blood that joins the pooled, stale blood on the floor. Skin and hair and muscle and fat pulled away as Mike screamed and screamed and screamed. The hands flipped him over hand onto his back, reaching into his open mouth and tugging at his tonge once, twice, three times until if a flurry of pain and blood it was torn away, twitching in a cupped palm.

Mike gurgled, drowning in his own blood, as the hands tore his body apart. The room around him began to warp and melt and crumble.

With his last choking, struggling breaths he fought through the crumbling vision of the room until he saw he was still in the mines, scratches all over his half-naked body and his own tongue in his hand. Mike gargled as he felt a ghostly, barely there hand petting his hair.

The last thing he heard before he died was,  _"Be mine."_

\------------

Out of instinct, he locked the sanatorium door behind them. For all the good that was going to do them. The place was dark and desolate, Ashley's flashlight and a few shafts of snow-flecked moonlight lighting their way. They could hear, could feel the whispers and mumbles of the sanatorium's dead patients, but they did not draw near. Matt's heart thundered. They were waiting for them. Luring them into a trap. Sam looked around nervously before looking up at him.

"We should hurry," she said. "You know where we're going?"

Matt led them up a crumbling flight of stairs he thought he recognized and tried to think back to when he'd been here last, where the old man's camp was. Emily had still been alive back then. If he hadn't wasted so much time he could have saved her.

"The chapel's up here...I think," Matt mumbled to the girls, trying desperately to keep his brain on track. Get to the camp, find the ritual supplies, get out. That simple.

They moved through the ruined hall, getting close to the chapel door and Matt thinks he can remember this place, can probably retrace his steps from here if grief and ghosts don't drive him crazy first.

"Do you really think this is gonna work?" Ashley asked quietly.

"It's our only shot," Matt said. "I'm not about to leave them alone up here."

"Then join us."

Matt wheeled around in a panic, raising his fists and had just enough time to see Ashley striking Sam in the back of the head with her flashlight. Sam crumpled to the floor. Ashley laughed in a voice too deep, too cold to be hers.

"Shit!" Matt yelled. "Shit!"

"Wow, I really had you guys going, didn't I?" Not Ashley chuckled. "I guess when you hang around with somebody enough, you get pretty good at acting like them, huh?"

"Who are you?!" Matt demanded, his voice shaking. He could hear the spirits of the sanatorium laughing all around him.

"Y'know, I was always kinda jealous of you, pretty boy," Not Ashley sneered. "You got looks, brawn and all the girls you wanted while this loser virgin here couldn't even grow the balls to ask out the one girl he liked."

"C-Chris...?"

"Good call, big man," Chris said. "Sorry 'bout all this but I really don't think you should be trying to stop us."

"Chris, please, we're just trying to help!"

Chris snorted.

"Fuck your 'help'. You have no idea what the fuck you're doing. You'd probably just send us to hell."

"So you'd rather just stay here forever."

Chris shrugged.

"Pretty much, man. All us losers together."

He looks up at Matt, the flashlight casting strange shadows across the face he wore.

"And don't think we're letting you miss out."

Ashley's body lurched toward him, Chris's ghastly smirk on her face. Before he could strike a deep growl interrupted them. Something blurry and white burst into view, colliding with Chris and tackling him to the floor. Matt followed the chaos only to realize the assailant was the white wolf he'd seen earlier. Matt breathed out.

"Thanks man," he said breathlessly to the wolf before grabbing Sam's prone body and making a break for the door. He got about three steps there before the ground caved underneath his feat and sent him and Sam careening into the room below. Matt landed hard on his back and gasped as the wind got knocked out of him. He heard Sam groan beside him, heard the whispers and muted laughter all around.

_You think you're so special, little thing._

_You think you can save your little friends?_

_Your flesh makes you arrogant. You're powerless._

_We'll pull the air from your lungs and make you watch yourself decay._

"Get away," Matt gasped. "G-get the fuck away from me..."

_We gave our lives to work for the world, to produce and help and heal. Now you brats strut around and waste your years and it's not fair. You won't live. You don't deserve it._

Matt curled away from the voices, tears in his eyes and god he just wanted it all to stop, he wanted to get away, he wanted to wake up.

"Matt."

Sam's voice was not her own. Matt felt a hand on his cheek, soft and careful. Sam spoke again, in a way she never spoke, in a way only one person had ever spoken around Matt.

"Matt, it's me."

Everything in his brain told him not to but he looked into her eyes and he knew, he knew.

"Emily..."

"I'm sorry, Matt. I was horrible to you. But, but I can be better, I promise. So please don't leave me?"

"Em, I'm not gonna leave you," Matt begged. "I'm just trying to help—"

"It's too risky," Emily told him. "You don't know what you're doing. 'Sides, you don't need to lock us away in some little box. Just let us take you. Nothing will hurt. Nothing will be complicated or messy. We'll have so much time."

She smiled that subtly sweet Emily smile and Matt felt a lump form in his throat. Emily stroked his cheek again.

"We'll be together forever, big guy. How does that sound?"

Matt shakily managed to get into an unsteady sitting position. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that he'd fallen into the priest's chambers. He could see his bags and equipment lying in a pile about three feet away from him. He reached over to Emily and pulled her into a hug, wishing that he could pull her out of whatever dark hellish illusion of heaven her spirit was trapped in and bring her back to life. Emily purred happily in his arms.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

With all his strength he threw Sam's body away from him and ran over to the pile, grabbing all the ritual supplies supplies he could carry before running for the door. Emily got back on her feet and screamed with rage before charging after him, shouting insults and curses and pleas all at once. The spirits crowd with laughter as the spectacle unfurled before him.

Distantly Matt could hear the howl of a wolf as he fled.

\------------

The priest had trained the wolves to protect the living in his absence.

The white one was doing his job a little too well.

He couldn't blame him, not really. The spirit possessing that girl would've killed everyone in that room if she hadn't been stopped.

But.

Now the poor girl lay in a puddle of blood, tooth marks in her neck, twitching feebly and the last damn thing they need is another spirit on their hands.

If he could get there before another spirit can poison her mind, then perhaps—

Ah, but the other spirits of the sanatorium, the ghosts of the girl's friends, they held him back, cold hands reaching out, teeth and claws and they laugh as he fights them back, as the dead boy the dying girl loved approached her.

Out of the girl's body came a faint light, a trembling, flickering outline of a girl. The boy held her shoulders.

 _I'm cold,_ the girl whispered. The boy held her close.

_I know. It'll get better. Come on, we gotta go get Matt._

_Fight him, girl!_ The priest called desperately.  _You don't have to do this, just fight!_

 _But..._ the girl whimpered.  _I don't want to be alone. I want Matt and Sam here with us._

 _Exactly,_ The boy said.  _Everyone together. Family reunion._

 _You're no killer, girl,_ the priest tried as more hands pulled him back.

The girl looked up at him, and her voice as she spoke to him was low and frightening.

_But I am. I've already killed. And you know what? I think I kinda liked it._

The spirits laughed again.

\------------

He shouldered the door until it gave, and suddenly he was in the foyer of the lodge, alone.

Nine hours ago the room had been full of his friends, nervous and unhappy but alive. Emily and Jess had fought over trivial things and Josh had smirked as he threw the fire together. Matt fought the urge to break down and cry. He had to focus, had to stay strong. If he hired he could still save Sam, maybe Ashley too. He could make sure everyone passed on. They could be okay. They could be fine.

Matt let out a shaky breath and walked up the nearest flight of stairs. The books had said a phylactery needed to be something the spirits valued or treasured to be able to properly house them. Matt could think of only one thing that all his friends treasured equally.

Sitting on a shelf outside of Josh's bedroom was a framed photograph of the ten of them on their first lodge trip all together, lounging on couches, laughing as the picture was snapped. They looked so young and happy, dressed in corny 2011 fashions, cuddled together like there was nothing in the world they wanted more than one another.

The picture trembled in Matt's shaking hands. Time to finish this.

_Snap._

Matt wheeled around at the sound. Downstairs he could see Sam—Emily—smirking up at him, a snapped pipe from the gas fireplace leaking natural gas into the room and Matt swallows a scream.

No. No no no no.

Matt ran down the stairs, stopping short when he saw the lighter held aloft in Emily's grip.

"Any wrong move and I'll fry us both," she warned. "Stay right there. There's a good boy."

"Emily, please," he begged. "Please stop this. Let me help you, please!"

"I don't want your help, lughead," Emily spat. "I want your fucking soul."

"Em—"

"You know what's gonna happen when you do your stupid little ritual, Matt? You're gonna trap us in some tiny little box and then you're gonna try to have us 'pass on' or whatever, and you know where I'm going? I'm going to hell. You're gonna send me to fucking hell."

"That's not true, that's not—"

"Oh really? 'Cause I've been  _sooo_ saintly my whole life, right? Christ, think about that you're doing, Matt!"

"Emily, I—"

"I don't wanna go to hell, Matt," Emily said, her voice suddenly soft, vulnerable. "I wanna be here, with you. I—I love you."

Matt felt his eyes sting as his vision clouded. He wondered if she was lying, but figured if she didn't love him she would've just torched the place and not tried to convince him to go with her. It took all his strength to resist, to keep his grasp on the ritual supplies. He could still save her, he could still save everyone.

"I—I have a little sister," Matt said miserably. "Em,  have to go back home to her. I don't wanna die."

 _I had little sisters too,_ Josh's voice cut in.  _I love them and you took them from me. You really think you deserve to live, asshole?_ Matt turned to see Josh's silhouette in the faint light of near-dawn. The others were there too, all of them—Hannah and Beth and Jess and Mike and Chris and Ashley (oh god, he didn't save her, he couldn't save her).

 _Matt, it doesn't hurt too bad,_ Jess crooned.  _It's a little cold, maybe? But we'll all be together up here. We'll never get old._

 _It's eternity, Matt,_ Ashley joined in.

 _You really want to be alone and traumatized for the rest of your life dude?_ Mike asked.

 _You really hate us so much you just wanna leave us?_ Beth asked.

"N-no, I don't hate you!" Matt begged. "I just—"

 _Just what? Just wanna send us to burn in hell while you go to bed every night deluding yourself into thinking you did the right thing?_ Chris challenged.

"No, no, I—"

 _Matt, it's okay,_ Hannah whispered.  _You're scared. I understand. But everything's gonna make so much sense so soon. Just trust us._

Emily held up Sam's hand for him to take.

"Come on Matt," she said. "Trust me."

Matt stared at the hand, feeling something tired and resigned in the back of his mind saying  _just take it, just give in, get it over with._

Matt thought of home, of his mom and dad, greeting him every morning with fresh made waffles and smiles and his sister running off with his jacket, giggling, shouting "catch me if you can!"

His family was waiting for him. So was his other family.

He thought of everything he and his friends had promised one another, all the love he felt for Emily, all the grief he felt for Hannah and Beth. He thought of what his life would be like without them.

He thought of his little sister's gap-toothed smile, of the promise he'd made to teach her football one day.

Matt closed his eye and barreled into Emily before she could react, sending her falling to the floor and the lighter skittering across the floorboards. He ran for the lighter but a flash of ghostly light blinded him as shrieks of anger rang in his ears. With one flailing arm he blindly batted the lighter away from him and Emily, across the room. Emily snarled and dove after it, Matt taking the few second he had to start the ritual.

He flipped open the books and recited the ancient words in his brain as he lay out the supplies, sprinkling ancient powders and writing old words with as much speed as he could muster while Emily scrambled for the lighter. 

 _Don't do this,_ the spirits begged.  _Stop. Stop!_

He sprinkled another powder over the photo and began the final chant in his head. The spirits screamed. He could feel a strange power well up inside of him, could feel the world of the spirits open up to him. Distantly he could hear the sound of the lighter being picked up, could hear metal scraping against metal. A light bloomed inside his chest as the spirits drew closer to him, to the trap he'd created for them.

He was so close, so close. All he had to do was—

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! All we got left is a brief epilogue.  
> I've got a couple of tests coming up, so it might be a while before I update my pics again, but worry not! They're coming right up, I promise you.  
> Leave a comment if you liked what you read!  
> Thanks for reading!


	12. Epilogue

By the time the rescue crew got to the cabin, it was dawn.

The rising sun did little to chill the frigid mountain air, and the crew members shivered inside the helicopters as they drew close to the site of the lodge.

Or rather, what was left of it.

Massive plumes of smoke drifted up to the sky, blotting out the sun and filtering its light into beams of sickly orange. Flames licked charred wood, embers and snowflakes colliding in midair. A vision of wealth and status reduced to smoke and ash.

The pilot scanned the premises and saw nothing, no one. She felt something slam into her gut, a wicked, awful feeling.

They were too late.

\------------

Matt felt cold.

Horribly cold. Colder than he'd ever felt in his life. Like someone had reached deep inside of him and ripped away every hint, every memory of warmth and left him with nothing but the bitter, bitter cold.

But.

Everything had been warm, so hot and painful and all-consuming, spreading through his body and setting every cell ablaze and—

No.

No no no no.

All around him were tangles of rising smoke and licking flames, and awash in the inferno he was suddenly absurdly glad he could feel nothing but cold.

Matt could just make out the charred remains of his own body, blood boiling and the picture of his friends shattered beyond repair.

He'd been so close.

Through the smoke emerged nine silvery silhouettes, hands outstretched and kind, myriad voices soft. He drifted away from them but they surrounded them, arms wrapping around his being and it made him just the tiniest bit warmer.

He felt just a tiny bit better.

 _My sister..._ Matt sobbed.  _M-my sister..._

 _It's okay, baby,_ Emily whispered.  _It's okay. I've got you. We'll all be together._

 _Together forever,_ Hannah told him.

He wanted to fight them, to escape but there was no point, no point, no point. He'd lost. He'd be with them forever.

Might as well make the most of it.

They held one another, ten trembling, tiny specters lost in smoke and fire, watching the crew take their sinful, broken bodies away.

\------------

Rescue crews come and go and the spirits have their fun with them.

Horrible accidents and murders and suicides. New spirits, confused and alone as their unspent years are gobbled up.

The ten dead children get stronger, the lives they drink up filling them up, making them warmer, more real.

They can make the living as cold as them, rob them of the life they squander. They can kill and kill and kill and it has gotten easier over time.

The priest, the guardian who had longed to set the spirits free is now among them, watching them grow corrupted and hungry, cackling as they stop hearts and break minds.

This whole mountain is damned. The ethereal monsters that inhabit it grow hungrier by the day.

Years pass. The ten dead children forget their names, their faces. They only remember the warmth and comfort of one another, their bonds, and that is the only thing they have left nowadays, the only vestige of their lost humanity.

Few dare to go to the mountain. Only fools attempt it, and they never leave alive.

Death is hungry and hell is full. The dead want company.

There are no graves on the mountain. Just spirits and bones. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaannnd done!  
> Sorry this took so long; you would not believe the workload I've had this month.  
> The other fics I'm working on should be resuming shortly. Thanks for being patient with me.  
> Please leave a comment if you liked it!  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
